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Researchers at Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH) have developed a digital therapy device in the form of an app that allows Parkinson's disease patients to get customized voice therapy at home through their smartphones.
Professor Kim Han-joon
Professor Kim Han-joon
The hospital said Friday that a research team led by Professor Kim Han-joon of the Department of Neurology has developed a smartphone-based digital therapy device that allows patients with Parkinson's disease to receive voice therapy at home without visiting a hospital.
The app evaluates the patient's voice condition. It automatically provides training accordingly. The training consists of breathing exercises, oral exercises, voice loudness training, pitch training, and speaking training.
Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by slowed movement, muscle stiffness, and tremors, along with voice changes and articulation difficulties early on. Studies have shown that 75 percent of people with Parkinson's disease develop voice and articulation problems as the disease progresses, which can cause significant difficulties in communication and daily living.
Notably, the voice becomes lower and monotonous, pronunciation becomes inaccurate, and speech becomes uncontrollable. These symptoms significantly impact patients' social activities and psychological health.
However, Parkinson's medications do not improve voice disorders, and specialized speech rehabilitation is the most effective treatment. Still, there is a lack of access to speech rehabilitation therapy, and the cost and difficulty of traveling to clinics is a problem.
A 2024 survey by the research team found that 63 percent of Parkinson's patients would like remote therapy, especially remote speech therapy, and a 2025 study found that more than 75 percent of people with moderate or severe Parkinson's reported not receiving any rehabilitation at all. This reality further emphasizes the need for remote non-drug therapy services.
The research team also demonstrated the effectiveness of the digital therapy device in their study. From September to November 2023, 28 patients with Parkinson's disease voice disorder (mean age 68 years, duration 7.5 years) participated in the study. They received treatment four days a week for five weeks.
The team assessed their adherence, satisfaction, and subjective voice improvement. It also evaluated treatment effectiveness through acoustic and auditory analysis of pre- and post-treatment voice data.
The results showed that 20 of the 28 patients had adherence rates of more than 90 percent. Four had adherence rates between 70 and 90 percent, suggesting that digital therapy devices can be a viable and sustainable treatment for patients.
In the satisfaction survey, 75 percent of patients were either very satisfied or satisfied, with no dissatisfied respondents, and 58.3 percent reported subjective voice improvement, with no deterioration.
Acoustic analysis showed significant improvements in maximum duration from 11.15 seconds to 14.01 seconds before and after treatment and voice intensity from 71.59 dB to 73.81 dB. Significant improvements were also observed in all items of the GRBAS (grade, roughness, breathiness, asthenia, and strain) scale, which assesses voice quality.
“The smartphone-based digital therapy device has demonstrated that it can be easily used at home by elderly Parkinson's patients, that they are highly satisfied with the treatment, and that it can provide effective voice therapy with little time and cost,” Professor Kim said. “Based on the study results, we are developing further improvements to the digital therapy device, and it is likely to be applied not only to voice therapy but also to other areas of Parkinson's disease treatment in the future.”
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Kim Kyoung-Won kkw97@docdocdoc.co.kr
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