DASH - Digital App for Speech & Health Monitoring

This project investigates the use of speech recordings and user-friendly technologies to better understand, diagnose and monitor neurodegenerative conditions and dementia.

Condition(s)

  • All neurodegenerative conditions & carers
  • Cognitive disorders
  • Motor neuron disease
  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Parkinson’s & movement disorders

Project type

  • Understanding the condition

About the project

Many people living with neurodegenerative conditions such as motor neuron disease, dementia, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease experience speech problems. Using common digital technologies such as smartphone apps, we can record and analyse speech, along with other health information in detail. We aim to provide new information for people living with these conditions, researchers, and healthcare professionals. This study will investigate the use of these digital technologies and speech recordings to help diagnose and monitor these conditions. 

The results may be of benefit to people with neurological conditions in the future. We anticipate that our research will lead to a better understanding of these conditions and could help in producing new and better treatments, tests, and ultimately, preventing neurological conditions.


Watch the DASH information video:

(Video opens in the University of Edinburgh's Media Hopper. Viewing length 3 mins 14 secs)


Information leaflet

Please download the relevant information leaflet:

Related links

SpeakUnique: University of Edinburgh spinout company offering voice banking technology, allowing people to communicate in their own voice when natural speech is not possible.

Dr Johnny Tam wins prestigious MRC Max Perutz Award for Science Communication. His short 1 minute animation summarises the DASH research project aims. (opens in the University of Edinburgh's Media Hopper)

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About us

Support us

 

Funder(s)

This study is funded by the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic.
Previous funding from the NEURii collaboration contributed to this work until March 2025.

Publication(s)

Digital App for Speech and Health Monitoring Study (DASH): protocol for a prospective longitudinal case–control observational study for developing speech datasets in neurodegenerative disorders and dementia

Johnny Tam, Christine Weaver, Amarachi Ihenacho, Judith Newton, Bruce Virgo, Steven Barrett, Jonathan Neale, David Perry, Alice Smith, Siddharthan Chandran, Oliver Watts, Suvankar Pal*, DASH Consortium

2025 Nov 04 in BMJ Open 2025, Volume 15, Issue 12

DOI: doi/10.1136/bmjopen-2025-100222

Comparator loss: An ordinal contrastive loss to derive a severity score for speech-based health monitoring

Jacob J Webber1 , Oliver Watts1 , Lovisa Wihlborg1 , David Wheatley1 , Johnny Tam2,4, Christine Weaver2,4, Suvankar Pal2,4,5, Siddharthan Chandran2,4,5, Cassia Valentini-Botinhao1

2025 Sep 22 in Arxiv.org

DOI: doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.17661

Evaluating pretrained speech embedding systems for dysarthria detection across heterogenous datasets

Lovisa Wihlborg, Jemima Goodall, David Wheatley, Jacob J. Webber, Johnny Tam, Christine Weaver, Suvankar Pal, Siddharthan Chandran, Sohan Seth, Oliver Watts, Cassia Valentini-Botinhao

2025 Sep 24 in Arxiv.org

DOI: doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.19946

A systematic review and narrative analysis of digital speech biomarkers in Motor Neuron Disease

Molly Bowden, Emily Beswick, Johnny Tam, David Perry, Alice Smith, Judy Newton, Siddharthan Chandran, Oliver Watts, Suvankar Pal

2023 Dec 07 in npj Digital Medicine

DOI: 10.1038/s41746-023-00959-9

Perceptions of digital technology use for monitoring health in people living with neurological disorders

Katie Reid, Emily Beswick, Johnny Tam, Alexander Symonds, Dawn Lyle, Judy Newton, David Perry, Jonathan Neale, Siddharthan Chandran, Suvankar Pal

2024 Jul 15 in J Neurol Sci

DOI: 10.1016/j.jns.2024.123072

DASH logo - Digital App for Speech and Health Monitoring Study

Status

Recruiting now

Contact

At present, it is only possible to sign up in person at the Anne Rowling Clinic, but you can contact the team for further information about similar remote opportunities.

loth.dash@nhs.scot

0131 465 9517

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