Events of the past years have helped transform the health sector which includes the means of providing and receiving services. As a result, efforts towards leveraging on technology to enhance better health care delivery to patients have yielded positive results regards innovative solutions.
Patients recovering from incidents need access to therapy which can require long-term, consistent treatment which is mostly not possible for healthcare providers or convalescing patients. For instance, in the U.K today, 17,000 accredited speech therapists serve 2.5 million people in need of therapy.
As a result, Holly Brown, a consultant at Capgemini developed the idea of an AI-powered speech and language therapy tool, SpeechFirst, which helps patients to proceed with their therapy at home and to support therapists to reaching more patients remotely.
Brown’s father suffered a stroke at age 43. Like many other 50 million people that suffer from stroke annually, his father didn’t have any underlying health condition and after 14 years, the impact is still been felt by him and his family. After her dad returned from hospital he embarked on a six weeks therapy course which influenced the idea of putting forward her idea to a group of peer graduates and took part in the Tech4PositiveFutures competition, Capgemini’s internal global challenge to seek out the best tech solutions that can develop positive futures by focusing on existing social issues. SpeechFirst emerged as the winner and secured startup funding from the company to continue to develop the idea.
The Capgemini Applied Innovation Exchange supported the project by providing UX/UI designer, full-stack developer, a data scientist, and a project manager. The team was able to from concept to a fully developed app within 10 weeks, a task that was supposed to take two years in some situations. The UCL Clinic agreed to conduct a clinical test with the app under the supervision of Professor Rosemary an expert in the language therapy field.
Professor Varley said: “There is increasing recognition of the need for high-intensity practice for speech and language activities to be effective. Therapy software, tailored to the person’s needs, provides a cost-effective way of delivering this practice without the need for a therapist to be present at all times. It is also consistent with the development of self-management skills in people living with a long-term disability. The use of therapy software puts the control in the person’s own hands.”
SpeechFirst is an app that can recognize and provide feedback on the spoken performance of patients using AI. The founder hopes that the app could be rolled out to thousands of patients soon so that healthcare providers can administer the therapy to those in need of such rehabilitation.
