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Radboud University and Logoclicks work together for innovative aphasia app

Date of news: 14 October 2020

It is so normal to be able to speak, you hardly ever think about it. Yet, for more than 30,000 people with aphasia in the Netherlands, to be able to 'just say something’ is not self-evident. That is why Radboud University and Logoclicks are working together to create a single platform for people with aphasia with the help of SimpTell. This platform gives people with aphasia concrete tools to express themselves again.

Therapy app SimpTell is specially developed for people with permanent Broca's aphasia. This is a form of aphasia, caused by acquired brain injury, in which the expression of spoken and written language is disturbed. People with aphasia have difficulty producing grammatical sentences quickly and flawlessly, and finding the right words is often a laborious process. Because of this, people with Broca's aphasia miss connection in conversations with family and friends, and face a great challenge of making themselves understood in the outside world.

The Week of Aphasia

The idea for SimpTell arose from applied research by three scientists at Radboud University, Marina Ruiter (Centre for Language Studies), Ardi Roelofs (Donders Institute) and Vitória Piai (Donders Institute and Radboud university medical center). Ruiter researched whether a combination of image and words could provide a different way of talking for people with aphasia. A way of talking that is short and concise. This makes communication faster, but still clear. The three scientists developed these findings further into the SimpTell-app within the gravitation programme ‘Language in Interaction’.

In order to bring this innovative app to the market and make it available for people with aphasia, Radboud University was looking for a social partner. The university found it in Logoclicks Development, the company which developed Afasietherapie.nl and Afasietherapie.be. ‘Based on scientific research, we succeeded in developing a solution for daily practice. The collaboration with Logoclicks now offers the opportunity to give SimpTell a social application and really bring it to people with aphasia,' says Ruiter.

Co-founder of Logoclicks, Jan Pons, adds: 'The Dutch language area is not very large, but it is very fragmented. That is why the Week of Aphasia is a great opportunity to draw extra attention to this important topic. We are very pleased with the collaboration with Radboud University to combine SimpTell and Afasietherapie.nl into one smart eHealth solution. It is so important to work together on therapy tools for this group of people for whom communication is no longer obvious.’

SimpTell

Therapy app SimpTell continuously teaches the user to speak in telegram-style, such as 'Had a stroke. Talking differently now'. Telegram-style speech is an optimal adaptation to chronic Broca’s aphasia. However, intensive therapy is needed to automatize this way of speaking and thus suppress (irrepairably disturbed) speaking in full sentences.

Logoclicks

Logoclicks offers online therapy for people with aphasia under the guidance of professional speech therapists on Afasietherapie.nl and Afasietherapie.be. Logoclicks developed this platform to help speech therapists compose a wide variety of custom exercises at word level in a simple way. People with aphasia can also make these exercises independently at home in order to improve their language skills.

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