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Rosalyn Moran, Postgrad.
With waiting lists for specialist clinics long past their critical mass, a restructuring of the outpatient clinic paradigm, which removes redundancy from that queue formation, obviates a technological solution. Rosalyn Moran along with Dr. Richard Reilly from the Department of Electronic and Electrical at UCD are currently developing a unique remote diagnostic system to eliminate unnecessary specialist consultations at ENT Clinics.
The unique aspect has been the development of specialist speech analysis research combined with a Web-based infrastructure based on the emerging telephony interface standard for voice/web communications, VoiceXML. Built on the VoiceXML platform developed by Dublin company Voxpilot Ltd., patients place a call from any telephone and are then guided through an on-line testing structure that acquires several voice samples. From there, analysis algorithms extract features from these samples and input the findings to an automatic classifier that produces a decision on the existence of a vocal pathology. This information is then available to the Consultant or GP to combine with other patient information to form a diagnosis. This telephony VoiceXML based application allows differentiation between normal and pathologic voice with accuracy greater than 75%. Results show that disorders affecting the muscles surrounding and controlling the larynx can be detected remotely with an accuracy of 87%.
Currently, patients may be waiting up to three months following initial diagnosis in order to be considered for surgery, if required. This wait is due largely to the use of endoscopic exploration techniques that are time consuming and expensive with only specialised voice clinics provide testing. The system being developed requires no capital hardware investment and allows fast and objective measures of a patient�s vocal function.
Rosalyn Moran, a PhD researcher with Dr. Reilly, was awarded the Irish Software Association�s inaugural Student Award for Commercialisable Software at the Association�s Annual Award Ceremony at the Burlington last Friday. The Eur5000 prize was sponsored by Trinity Venture Capital. The team are hoping to expand this project�s research capacity with post-doctoral research into further spectral analysis algorithms to improve system accuracy and to continue beta program development with Dublin hospitals and to expand the study to hospital abroad.
Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering,
University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin 4
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