Digitise or Die

Today’s podcast is focused once again on healthcare and we are bringing it back to the all important demographic of children. Our guest is the fabulous Shona Darcy founder of Kids Speech Labs a digital health platform to support children’s speech and language development. Kids Speech Labs aims to manage the early stages of speech development at home, with children playing voice enabled games that, through continuous monitoring, can adapt training modules to their ongoing speech and language skills. Parents have access to a dashboard that informs them of their child’s progress, helping them make informed decision about their child’s needs. 

Shona has a PhD in children’s speech recognition and 10 years’ experience in digital health and has researched and validated digital health applications across several clinical areas.

Kids Speech Labs uses speech recognition, data, machine learning and predictive analytics to take the guessing game out of speech and language development. Shona’s goal is to help parents and healthcare providers ensure that no child misses out on the care they need, when they need it. Lets dive in and hear more from Shona on her journey. 

Today’s Podcast has the incredible Becca Hume, founder of TapSOS, a smartphone app that allows people to contact emergency services in a non-verbal manner. At 16 Becca worked alongside a deaf person in her afterschool job and decided to learn sign language to be able to communicate with him. She spent 8 years learning and has completed British Sign Language level 6.  She went on to graduated from Ulster University in 2015 with a Masters in Multidisciplinary Design. Becca saw a gap in the market for the deaf community to access emergency services and with using her design degree created TapSoS. She is curious about users, behaviours and needs in order to design functional products for accessibility. Becca is a ‘Global Shaper’ – a World Economic Forum initiative comprising of a  network of under 30s working together to address regional and global challenges to play an active role in shaping policy, innovation, health, education and more.

Our first episode features an incredible nursing graduate, Ali-Rose Sisk who is the founder of SafeCare – an innovative system aimed at nurses, which digitalises written documentation, allowing more time for patient care. 

Until recently, the East Cork native was based in London, where she was working on a Marie Curie PhD scholarship to develop NHS palliative care services for people with early-onset dementia. However, when the pandemic hit, Ali-Rose returned home to help on the frontline and is now balancing clinical work with her PhD studies and her business. She has a special interest in dementia care having created VERA, a dementia communication intervention project, as part of her master’s degree at UCC. Ali-Rose is also a former World Powerlifting Champion.