Dr. Yunjung Kim, Associate Professor from the School of Communication Science and Disorders, was recently awarded a research grant from Korea Health Industry Development Institute, which is titled Developments of speech rehabilitation software for persons with dysarthria secondary to stroke. 

This project, in collaboration with Human-AI-Information (HAII) in South Korea, aims to develop a smartphone-based, AI-assisted, and patient-driven speech rehabilitation software for people with dysarthria secondary to stroke and to examine its treatment efficacy. Currently, in the first phase of the project, HAII is establishing and testing the new speech rehabilitation software. This software will then go through its clinical trial study in 2023, which will take place at FSU. 

“Our team believes that this software has potential to be included in speech rehabilitation for those patients who find it hard to receive in-person speech therapy for whatever reasons but are still in need of speech therapy,” says Dr. Kim. “There is a need for expanding speech rehabilitation service delivery (in addition to the traditional face-to-face service). This need has been recognized due to several reasons such as limited access to service, time constraint, and physical mobility/fatigability of the patients, not to mention the challenges posed by the recent pandemic.” 

When asked what she was most excited to achieve with this grant, Dr. Kim said “I’m most excited that this is my first clinical trial project that will be conducted beyond the sound booth and that the results will show how speech technologies can be clinically used for speech rehabilitation!”