Development of Speech Therapy Mobile Application for Aphasia Patients

Abstract

Aphasia is a difficulty in communication due to the loss of linguistic abilities caused by brain injuries. People with aphasia can recover their lost abilities through training with language therapy where it trains the ability to read, write, comprehends, and produce speech. With the booming advance in technology, telerehabilitation with the use of IoT opens up possibilities for improvement for providing a better life for people with aphasia. Smartphones being mobile and pocketsized can provide a big improvement for people with aphasia. Mobile applications can be designed and developed based on people’s needs including healthcare. This study will focus on mobile application development for Malay-speaking people with aphasia. Stroke cases in Malaysia have been up to 14396 cases between the year 2012 to 2019 and a median of 34% of post-stroke patients obtained aphasia. In this study, speech therapy mobile apps with a monitoring system will be developed. The mobile app is designed and developed using the Flutter Software development kit as the tool for mobile apps development and IoT as a connection between devices. The monitoring system will be tested to collect the data from users that completed the task and can be accessed by the patient’s caregiver and the patient’s Speech-Language Therapist.