The Possibilities of Smart Clothing in Adult Speech Therapy: Speech Therapists' Visions for the Future

The potential of technology in healthcare has been closely explored in recent years. Increasingly more innovative technology-assisted rehabilitation methods for various customer groups are constantly being developed. However, the possibilities of smart clothing in adult speech rehabilitation have not been previously studied. The purpose of this study was to discover speech therapists' visions about the possibilities of smart clothing in adult rehabilitation. We organized an ideation workshop in December 2020 with four speech therapists who had worked in adult rehabilitation for at least five years. The workshop was held online on the Zoom platform. In the workshop we presented three questions for the speech therapists: 1) Which adult speech therapy clients could benefit from smart clothing? 2) What could smart clothing be used for in speech therapy rehabilitation for adults? and 3) How could smart clothing be used in speech therapy rehabilitation for adults? Qualitative data from this research was analyzed by thematic analysis. The main results of this study were that patients with dysphagia and patients with voice disorders were seen as the groups with the greatest potential use smart clothing, and continuous registration of various physiological functions of voice and swallowing were voted as the most usable applications of smart clothing. The most discussed topics were using smart clothing to monitor rehabilitation and using the clothing to activate and motivate the client by giving feedback. And finally, the easiest ways to control smart clothing were seen to be body movements, gestures, and touch.