LAOLA is the second project in which scientists from the University of Oldenburg are researching an app for interactive voice training. Together with their partners from speech therapy and computer science, they want to improve voice therapy for patients and therapists. Learn more about the goals we set for ourselves..
Without OLA–the “Oldenburger Logopädie-App”–no LAOLA. Both projects were initiated at Pius Hospital Oldenburg, under the supervision of Prof. Dirk Weyhe, head of the University Clinic for Visceral Surgery (Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg). OLA enabled patients suffering from vocal fold paralysis after thyroid surgery to start the necessary vocal exercises directly in the hospital.
A new perspective for patients with vocal issues
With LAOLA, patients should be given the opportunity to exercise at home in a self-determined manner. In this respect, LAOLA is a further development of OLA and will add important functionalities to the original application. LAOLA is intended to provide all patients with voice disorders with individualized feedback from experts–immediately after or during their exercises. In this way, the app can help patients to train their voice faster and more effectively.
Funded by the Federal Government
The positive potential of the LAOLA app has also been recognized by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Through its funding, the BMBF grants this research consortium the opportunity to develop and test a demonstrator. The LAOLA demonstrator can be seen as the earliest working prototype of an eventual LAOLA app. How specifically patients benefit from working with the demonstrator will be tested by the LAOLA partners during the project run time through studies with volunteers. Their interaction with the LAOLA app will, among other things, help train the algorithm that will drive the app.
Knowledge and transfer
After successful completion of the project, the findings and research results can be used as a starting point for the development of a medical product. In addition, two doctoral theses are being written as part of LAOLA, at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Oldenburg and at the Institute of Medical Informatics, Universität zu Lübeck. Both theses make the knowledge gained from the project accessible to a broader public.
