Monitoring voice over a long period

The growing interest in the protection of voice and new rules on the recognition of voice disorders as occupational diseases require screening methods capable of identifying voice professionals at risk of dysphonia and tools to carry out non-invasively monitoring of the quality of voice over time. Politecnico di Torino, in collaboration with S.C. ENT 2 U. of the University of Turin and the PR.O.VOICE srl, start-up incubated in I3P of the Politecnico di Torino, has designed two wearable devices, based on the Voice Care® technology, which allow monitoring of voice activity for voice professionals. It consists of a light version, the Vocal Holter app, low cost, to be installed on a common smartphone, and a pro version, the Vocal Holter med, made up of a dedicated device, aimed at physicians and speech pathologists, and able to perform more extensive and personalised analysis. The devices monitor voice parameters related to intensity, intonation and vocal load and, in addition to the traditional ones, they monitor the Smoothed Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPPS), a new parameter considered the most promising predictor of dysphonia and its severity. The analysis and results are based on the distributions of occurrences of these parameters, in order to obtain more and more reliable information on the vocal characteristics of the person under test. The equipment allows downloading and saving data on a dedicated web site for further processing, comparisons over time or sharing with physicians or rehabilitators. According to the voice monitoring results protocols for voice care are also provided.