ITalkBetter app significantly improves speech in stroke patients

A UCL-developed app that provides speech therapy for people with the language disorder aphasia has been found to significantly improve their ability to talk. iTalkBetter, developed by the Neurotherapeutics Group at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, provides users the digital platform to practice over 200 commonly used words, in their own time and without any limits on the amount of therapy they receive. While employing games to maintain engagement, the app's integrated speech recogniser analyses speech in real time to give the user feedback on whether they have named the displayed item correctly. A new study, published in eClinicalMedicine and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) , found that when used over a six-week period for around 90 minutes per day, iTalkBetter significantly improved patients' ability to name items by 13% for the 200 commonly used words. Importantly, spontaneous speech was also found to improve. Aphasia occurs when a person suffers brain damage, usually to the organ's left side, leading to difficulties with speech or language. The most common causes are stroke, severe head injury and brain tumours.