Impulse represents a major breakthrough in wellbeing since this sophistacted innovation, for the first time in history, allows speech therapy to go beyond the walls of the speech specilalist’s office to improve the lives of patients through devices available in every corner of the planet on a platform used by 3bn people daily. Impulse complements traditional medical practices by greatly reducing costs and shortening treatment times. Reducing inequalities to unlock social and labour inclusion. impulse was created with the support and supervision of speech therapy experts from 4 continents and represents a milestone by digitizing rhythm therapies for all.

Spain has one of the most complete public healthcare in the world but in 2024 pathologies such as stuttering are not covered with therapies to improve fluency by the government. This makes accessing rhythm treatment to improve expensive and limited to a few.

In Spain, millions of people suffer from this pathology in silence without treatment, and totally limited from having a full life. Impulse emerges as a therapy that allows anyone with a speech problem due to stroke, degenerative diseases or stuttering to be able to train autonomously and continuously thanks to technology.

Impulse seeks to support with exercises those who have treatment with a doctor, which allows them to continue outside the consultation and those who cannot have treatment due to lack of income allows them to personally practice alone and advance.

This technological initiative has been received with great acceptance by the Spanish and Portuguese associations of speech disorders and by their members since it gives a democratic, free and advanced option to a group that for years.

Technological influences:

Due to the few advances in history for speech disorders, Samsung creates an app that, thanks to AI, brings the consultation rhythm method to the wrists of millions. The influence came from digitizing all the analogical work of the consultations to an intelligent coach that, through exercises, allows users with the Natural language processing algorithm to separate words into syllables and then into vibrations to create a rhythm that helps patients. to improve your fluency.

• Context

In Spain, speech therapists are not covered by social security, so thousands of people can’t afford treatments.

• Limitations

In Spain, developing a health-related app requires very high standards, especially from Samsung. Impulse needed a test rating up to 4/5 on patients as well as international organisations to go ahead. We achieved: 4,5/5 rating, Endoresement of Speech Therapists Association (Spain & Portugal) and support of 6 Speech experts from 4 continents.

- Insights

Speech therapies have stagnated for years in tandem with technological advances, resulting in a number of speech disorders being treated independently. In addition, a large number of people still do not have access to therapists to help them improve their fluency.

- Intention/purpose

We convert one of the most widely used speech therapies such as rhythm therapy into a digitalized tool to make such methods accessible to all.

- Adaptation of an existing platform or new

impulse use the haptic technology of Galaxy watch to create vibrations patterns to guide people with speech disorders to synchronized the fluently.

-4 July 2023- Brief: Samsung's Technology with Purpose brief arrived at our agency. Samsung, as part of its Technology with Purpose program and global mobile brand platform of ‘openness’, wanted to create an accessible solution to improve the speech of 100 million people with disorders and, in this way, touch one of the pillars of the brand: communication.

-27 Ago 2023- The idea: Democratize, through the use of technologies that we all have at hand, a therapy available to few. An app that takes the proven rhythm therapy method out of the specialists’ clinic and into the real world, enabling people to have an invisible speech therapist in their wrist. One that also can be used as a digital speech coach, as well as delivering continued personalized exercises to improve their speech problem.

- 20 Ago -15sept 2023- The app: Development of Impulse, Strong coordination with medical experts in language therapy from more than 5 countries helped us create the most common and effective exercises to begin development.

- 20 Sept 2023 : Creation of a work group made up of developers, creatives, and a medical expert plus a person with a stutter to practice the exercises and digitize them.

- 10 Nov 2023. development of mode 1 and 2. (impulse your voice, impulse your rythm)

- 6 January 2024: first beta version (mode 1/2).

- 6 january 2024 until March 2024- Testing: Testing of the app designed by an international medical team led by Gonçalo Leal, clinical director of Speech Care. For + 6 months people with different speech pathologies (dysarthria, dysphemia and dysprosody) tested Impulse. It received a 4.5/5 user rating for its usefulness and functions.

22 Feb 2024: Final version with all the funtionalities. Test Continue with new participants.

21 March 2024- The endorsement: Impulse received the endorsement of the Spanish Association of Speech Therapy & Portuguese (Sociedade Portuguesa de Terapia da Fala) and was launched to the media in early April in the Iberian market. Downloads began both in Google Play and Galaxy Store and the news conversation started. The main national and international media echoed, both generalist and specialized in marketing & advertising.

17 April 2024- Testimonials: Three testimonial videos were recorded based on real stories of love, friendship and work, in which people affected by different pathologies tell how there are words that, more than blocking their speech, have blocked their life. Until now.

Impulse uses Apache Open NLP, an Artificial Intelligence library used for Natural Language Processing, allows intelligent and automated linguistic decoding of syllables by converting them into beats via the watch's vibrometer. It converts the latter into an analogue metronome, creating a subconscious beats in the brain that activates the neural impulses of language, improving speaking fluency.

This way the Impulse technology becomes an alternative medical solution targeting an ignored audience, as speech therapists are not covered by Social Security. Voice assistance, AI speech coach, Rhythm and Tone exercise programmes… all the features of this multi-functional tool are based on "rhythm therapy", a proven logopaedic treatment that stimulates this universal language that we all understand from birth with a compass.

The app also features sophisticated voice wave recognition technology that evaluates the user's performance in real time and stores the data for further analysis with the specialist. In addition, the tool uses the most advanced technologies of a modern Android app, both on mobile and smartwatch, with the Kotlin programming language and the Jetpack Compose toolkit for the interface.

Longterm outcomes:

impulse now is available in 3 languages, for 2025 the future plan is to expand to 5 differents lenguages. Nevertheless, the possibilites are unlimited, because the mode "impulse your voice" can be use in any lenguage thanks to universally of vibrations.

Scalability:

Samsung created an accessible and free technological solution to give the full power of fluent speech and communication to not just the thoughts of 500.000 Spanish with speech disorders, (including Alzheimer's, stroke, stuttering, etc) but also to the many millions worldwide that are held back in life due to speech disroders.

Results: Testing of the application, designed by an international medical team (Speech Care), for +6 months on people with different speech pathologies. Impulse received a user-rating of 4.5/5.

Investment received:

Due to confidentiality issues, we cannot reveal the total cost of the development, but it was a quarter of the average budget of the market.