SPEECHTOOLS

OUR AWARD-WINNING APPS ARE DESIGNED BY SPEECH AND LANGUAGE THERAPISTS TO HELP PEOPLE IMPROVE THEIR VOICE

INNOVATIONS

OF THE WORLD

FOR TODAY'S BIG THINKERS

As Featured In:

Our company
We are a husband-and-wife team based in Chipping Sodbury, a market town between Bristol and Bath. Our driving passion is to make voice therapy available to everyone wherever they are in the world by combining our expertise in speech & language therapy and technology.

 

Our story
In 2011, Sam Brady, a Speech and Language Therapist was working with a man with Parkinson’s Disease at Frenchay hospital, Bristol, when she had the idea to use delayed auditory feedback (DAF) to help him slow his speech speed to make it clearer. Developed to aid people who stammer, this was not a technology that had been widely used in the treatment of Parkinson’s before.

Sam struggled to get hold of the equipment she needed, and in the end had to source it from a neighbouring NHS trust. Even then, once she had it, the machine was difficult to use and cumbersome.

 

At the time her husband Garry was working as a Software designer at Hewlett Packard. Surrounded by rapidly advancing technology and the arrival of smart phones into the mainstream market, he thought it ludicrous that Sam was having to rely on outdated tech that was unavailable, unreliable, and expensive and thought there must be a
better solution.

He created a prototype of DAF on a smart phone to see if that would work. It was perfect: easy to use, inexpensive and most importantly available anywhere. “DAF Pro” was the first in the series of our apps which are now used by hundreds of thousands of people in over 170 countries worldwide.

Since then, we have established ourselves as the leading voice analysis app company in the world and are being used by more and more speech and language therapists, researchers, universities and patients.

 

Innovation
Since 2011 we have expanded our portfolio and are proud to ensure that each of our apps are designed to overcome a clinical challenge for Sam, her colleagues, and patients. All our apps work on Apple and Google devices making them available to anyone with a smartphone.

We love overcoming barriers in healthcare settings by designing and creating mobile solutions to be used in clinic as well as at home.

Working and living in the Bristol Bath area has opened many opportunities for us. As a micro business, we have appreciated the support and encouragement from local organisations, and it is this supportive, friendly place to live and work which makes it such a desirable place to live and work. There is a genuine supportive network in the health tech field where people encourage one another

The future
Health apps are part of a new wave of technologies being embraced by patients, charities, and professional health organisations alike. As a result, health care can now be delivered and monitored in new and innovative ways and we are so proud to be a part of this exciting healthcare evolution.

 

Milestones
2011
DAF Pro
We launched our first app to help people slow their rate of speech.

2012
Swallow Prompt
Our second app was created to help people manage excess saliva.

2013
Voice Analyst
We created Voice Analyst to make voice analysis available and affordable to clinicians and their patients for the first time.

2016
Christella VoiceUp
We partnered with Christella Antoni to design and create an app to make her voice feminisation therapy accessible to all.

2017
One Minute WarmUp
We created our fifth app in partnership with Vocal Process, leading vocal coaches, to create vocal exercises to keep voices healthy and strong.

2018
Parkinson’s UK
Voice Analyst and Swallow Prompt passed the rigorous testing by Our Mobile Health and Parkinson’s UK in order to be listed on their app library.

2019
ORCHA
Our apps were tested and approved by ORCHA, world leaders in app testing for health care providers worldwide such as the NHS.

2020
Medilink South West Award for Digital Health
We won our first award! Voice Analyst was recognised for its impact on digital health worldwide with over 1 million recordings analysed in over 170 countries and
counting!

ORCHA Covid-19 App Library
Voice Analyst and Swallow Prompt were included on ORCHA’s Covid-19 app library

 

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