Assessment of motor speech disorders online: a pilot study.
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Date
2004-01-19
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Abstract
We have conducted a preliminary validation of an Internet based telehealth application for assessing motor speech disorders in adults with acquired neurological impairment The videoconferencing module used NetMeeting software to provide realtime videoconferencing through a 128 kbit s Internet link as well as the transfer of store and forward video and audio data from the participant to the clinician Ten participants with dysarthria following acquired brain injury were included in the study An assessment of the overall severity of the speech disturbance was made for each participant face to face FTF and in the online environment in addition a 23 item version of the Frenchay Dysarthria Assessment FDA which measures motor speech function and the Assessment of Intelligibility of Dysarthric Speech ASSIDS which gives the percentage word and sentence intelligibility words per minute and a rating of communication efficiency were administered in both environments There was a 90 level of agreement between the two assessment environments for the rating of overall severity of dysarthria A 70 100 level of agreement was achieved for 17 74 of the 23 FDA variables On the ASSIDS there was a significant difference between the FTF and online assessments only for percentage word intelligibility These findings suggest that Internet based assessment has potential as a reliable method for assessing motor speech disorders