A New Substitute Voice Using a Smartphone Application

Abstract

Although widely used by patients who have undergone laryngectomy, vocalization using an electronic artificial larynx, tracheoesophageal shunt vocalization, and esophageal speech cannot reproduce a patient’s original voice, and this negatively affects their quality of life. In 2020, our department introduced a smartphone app called “coestation®,” an AI-based software that can reproduce voices with great similarity to the patient’s original voice by synthesizing 200 voice-recorded sentences.Our user survey revealed a high level of satisfaction with the similarity between the synthesized voices and the patients’ original voices. However, patients also showed dissatisfaction with the time lag and complexity of the app. In fact, only four of the six patients who agreed to participate in the survey were able to use the app properly. Consequently, the average voice-related quality of life among the app users was 61.9%, which is slightly lower than that among patients who used traditional substitute voices. Despite the remarkable quality of the voices reproduced by this innovative app, it should be constantly improved based on the patient feedback in order to meet their expectations.