SpeechPath Feasibility Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
SpeechPath Feasibility Study
IRAS ID
362852
Contact name
Claudine Milligan
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Alder Hey Children's Hospital
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 3 months, 31 days
Research summary
Patients with cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P) have speech therapy in hospital and are given paper at-home speech therapy to do with a caregiver. This at-home therapy is important for patients with CL/P as it gives them more practise and helps them improve their speech.
This paper-based speech therapy has some challenges around patient and carer motivation, confidence, and progress tracking. This means patients may not practice enough because of this which can slow down their speech progress.
We created SpeechPath to support patients with their speech therapy by including these features: SLT can prescribe speech therapy and track practise, games to increase motivation, and guidance to say the speech sounds.
During the study, patients will use the SpeechPath app to do their at-home speech therapy instead of using paper homework. The rest of their care will stay the same.
The main aim of this study is to see if patients would like to be involved in a bigger study. We will also collect information to find out if patients like the app, if they would change anything about it, and if it makes them do more speech therapy at-home when compared to the paper homework. We will do this by giving patients questionnaires before and after they use SpeechPath and using data from the app which we won’t be able to identify patients with.
This study will be done at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital with members of the Speech and Language Therapy, Innovation, and Research teams. To be eligible patients must:
• Have read the information leaflets and had time to ask any questions.
• Have parents’ consent to be part of the study.
• Have a CL/P or cleft speech characteristics.
• Be aged between 3-8 years of age.REC name
London - Hampstead Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
26/PR/0204
Date of REC Opinion
1 Apr 2026
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion