The purpose of this study was to develop a smartphone based voice therapy program for patients with voice disorders. Contents of voice therapy were collected through analysis of mobile contents related to voice therapy in Korea, experts and users' demand survey, and the program was developed using Android Studio. Content needed for voice therapy was collected through analysis of mobile contents related to voice therapy. The user satisfaction evaluation for application was conducted for five patient with functional voice disorders. The results showed that the mobile contents related to voice therapy in Korea were mostly related to breathing, followed by voice and singing, but only 13 applications were practically practiced for voice therapy. Expert and user demand surveys showed that the patients and therapists both had a high need for content that could provide voice training in places other than the treatment room. Based on this analysis, 'Home Voice Trainer', an smartphone based voice therapy program, was developed. Home Voice Trainer is an application for voice therapy and management based on Android smartphones. It is designed to train voice therapy activities at home that have been trained offline. In addition, the records of voice training of patients were managed online so that patients can maintain voice improvement through continuous voice consulting even after the end of voice therapy. User evaluations show that patients are satisfied with the difficulty and content of voice therapy programs provided by home voice trainers, but lack of a portion of user interface, such as the portion of home button and interface between screens. Further study suggests the clinical application of home voice trainer to the patients with voice disorders. It is expected that the development study and the clinical application of smart contents related to voice therapy will be actively conducted.
Objectives: Voice therapy aims to produce better voice quality by changing voice behavior. Patients are required to constantly practice and change their behavior every day. Voice therapy using smart phones not only encourages voice training in daily life, but also provides objective data during training. We investigated whether online and offline voice therapy programs using smartphones are effective for improvement of voice disorders. Methods: The present study was conducted on five patients with hyperfunctional voice disorder. Voice therapy was performed using vocal aerobic treatment (VAT). Offline VAT was performed once a week, and online VAT was performed more than once a week. Voice evaluations were achieved via acoustic evaluation, aerodynamic evaluation, and subjective voice evaluation before and after therapy. Results: The acoustic evaluation results showed that the Jitter, Shimmer and NHR decreased after therapy, while frequency range (Hz) and semitone increased. Aerodynamic evaluation illustrated increased expiratory volume (FVC), maximum phonation time (PHOT) and improved respiratory function related to phonation. Subjective voice evaluation demonstrated that the degree of voice disorder was reduced compared to that before the therapy. Conclusion: The online and offline voice therapy programs were found to be effective in improving the F0 and voice quality of voice disorder patients as well as respiratory function related to phonation, and also in increasing the F0 range. In future studies, it is necessary to study the efficacy of online and offline voice therapy programs in a wide range of patients. Also, online program development and application of voice therapy techniques used in evidence-based clinical studies are suggested to be actively conducted.
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