BAS Conference - Kerry is our Rising Research Star! 🌟

The UTILISE team have been busy spreading the word about our work at international conferences over the last couple of months.

In September, Kerry presented (twice!) at the British Aphasiology Society (BAS) Conference, which was held in London at UCL Queen Square. She spoke about outcomes of our pilot trial, both qualitative and quantitative, which we ran earlier in the year. We would like to thank all the participants of the pilot trial for their work using the app and for their attendance at focus groups. These participants gave us valuable insight into their experiences and shared their suggestions for improving the app. Kerry presented these insights as part of her presentations, highlighting the importance of developing effective remote therapy options to maximise dose potential for patients.

Kerry Dathan at the British Aphasiology Society Conference with her Rising Research Star award.

We would also like to thank the BAS team for giving us the opportunity to present our work. It was a terrific 3-day event with lots of fascinating talks, including some from service users. UTILISE team member Fern also presented a poster, sharing some outcomes from our in-person therapy trial.

We are very proud that Kerry was awarded the “Rising Research Star” award for her contributions to the conference. She is, without doubt, already a star, and has a bright research career ahead of her.

Well done, Kerry! A true asset to the team.

Kerry Corley on UTILISE self-managed therapy

We are hugely grateful to the Stroke Association for funding our ongoing research into post-stroke aphasia.

The UTILISE project has been developed with the aim of improving people with aphasia’s ability to produce and understand every-day sentences. We are about to take the exciting next step in our project journey, which involves lending people an iPad that they can use to access our therapy at home. Our work with Therapy Box has made it possible for us to build a version of our therapy which people can use remotely, meaning there is less travel commitment, less expense, and opportunity for people to spend more time doing therapy exercises from the comfort of their own sofa.

We are thrilled to share this Stroke Association video with you, in which our UTILISE PhD researcher, Kerry Corley, explains more about why she is part of UTILISE, and the work that we do. Professor Rosemary Varley, our project lead, and Tony, an individual with aphasia, also talk about why this research is so important.

The Stroke Association would not be able to fund such valuable work without the contributions of donors and the public. To make a donation to the Stroke Association, click here.

Thank you so much to everyone who supports our work!

Stroke Association Amazing Brains 2023

Jason Parker, stroke survivor, sharing his experience of struggling with mental health after his stroke.

Rosemary, Kerry and Fern from the UTILISE team were very excited to attend the Amazing Brains 2023 event last week, hosted by the Stroke Association.

Kerry Corley and Fern Rodgers from the UTILISE project, in front of Kerry’s award recognition screen, which reads: “I am excited to have a part to play in increasing our knowledge of self-directed computer therapies [for aphasia']. They have a key role in the future of stroke rehabilitation as a leap forward in the amount of therapy people with post-stroke difficulties can access.”

The event centred around the hugely important topic of mental health after stroke. After a significant, life changing event, like a stroke, it is common for people to struggle with feelings of anxiety, depression or anger. This is even more common in people with post-stroke aphasia, many of whom report feelings of isolation, loneliness and loss of confidence. Jason Parker gave a moving and inspirational speech about his first-hand experiences of working through mental health difficulties following his stroke, and how his determination helped him to deal with this experience and get him back to work.

Professor Mark Tarrant, Professor Maggie Lawrence, and Dr Emma Patchwood then spoke about their Stroke Association funded research into post-stroke mental health and the ways in which they are working to reduce the emotional burden experienced by many stroke survivors.

Kerry Corley, Fern Rodgers and Professor Rosemary Varley at Amazing Brains 2023.

We would like to thank the Stroke Association for running such a fantastic event, and for funding the UTILISE research project. We were also thrilled to celebrate our team’s recent funding success too, with Kerry Corley working towards her PhD and Dr Claudia Bruns commencing her post-doctoral fellowship. Without this funding, our work to help people living with aphasia after stroke would not be possible. Difficulty communicating can impact quality of life, and we hope to help.

If you are struggling with your mental health following a stroke, you are not alone. You can visit this webpage for more information, or, you can call the Samaritans on 116 123.

Speech and language therapist in training!

The UTILISE team are very excited to announce that our wonderful intern, Tae Horsfield, has been accepted onto the UCL MSc Speech and Language Sciences programme! Tae will train for two years from this Autumn 2023 to become an NHS qualified speech and language therapist. After the enthusiasm, attention to detail, hard work and care that she has demonstrated in the months that she has been working with us, we have no doubts at all that she will make a terrific clinician.

 

Well done, and good luck, Tae!

Spring 2023 at UTILISE

It’s 2023! What have we been working on? 

Time for an update from the UTILISE team. We have been working hard over the past few months…

UTILISE 1 

Recruitment for our first trial, “UTILISE 1”, in which our participants travelled into UCL for 12 therapy sessions with a researcher, has finished. Fern, Claudia and Kerry have now finished collecting data; the next step will be analysing the results so we can understand how much the therapy helps and who might benefit from it the most. 

Our intern, Tae, has carefully checked videos of us conducting assessments, to make sure that all researchers have been doing the same thing and have not introduced any bias to the results. She has found that we have high levels of fidelity, which is important for the integrity of our research. Put simply, the test was conducted well.

UTILISE 2 

We have also been busy setting up for the next phase, “UTILISE 2”. We have been working hard with our software partners, Therapy Box, to turn the original therapy programme into an app. This means that people will be able to do the therapy by themselves, at home. With remote access to our tasks, participants can do the therapy from the comfort of their own sofas at times that work best for them.

Kerry and Fern have put together a PPI (Patient Public Involvement) group. People with aphasia and their family members are sharing their opinions and insights with us so that we can improve the research plan and better direct the research towards what people with aphasia want. We have had 3 meetings on Zoom, so far, and are grateful to those involved for their time and contributions.  

The future of UTILISE 

Rosemary, leader of the UTILISE team, has been putting together an application for future funding, which, if awarded, would help us to continue developing UTILISE in the coming years, and allow us to collect more data to increase the confidence in our findings.

In other news… 

UTILISE researcher, Claudia Bruns, welcomed the arrival of her second daughter, baby Millie, in October 2022. Mum, baby and family are doing well, and Claudia is enjoying her maternity leave. 

For more information on the work of the team: 

  • Watch this space for updates.

  • Get in touch with Fern or Kerry to learn about ways you could be involved. We have a waiting list for UTILISE 2, and are always keen to hear people’s points of view. We always take an evidence-based approach to developing our projects, but we don’t know what it’s like to live with aphasia first-hand.  

 

Upcoming Event- UTILISE Team at the UCL World Stroke Day Forum 2022

This Friday, the 28th of October, the UTLISE team will be at the UCL World Stroke Day Forum.

The event, sponsored by The National Brain Appeal, encourages an open dialogue between researchers, clinicians, charities, stroke survivors, carers and loved ones. It aims to empower stroke survivors and raise awareness about stroke research and rehabilitation at UCL.


The UTLISE team will be hosting an expo stall all day, giving interactive demonstrations of the new app-based therapy developed with Therapy Box. You will have the chance to see our automatic speech recognition technology in action.

At 11am, Professor Rosemary Varley, principal investigator of the UTILISE project, will deliver a 15-minute talk, “How do we provide effective aphasia rehabilitation?”, followed by a Q&A.

Rosemary will talk about developing the UTLISE app to allow individuals to self-administer intervention. Remote digital therapy approaches have the potential to increase therapy time whilst reducing costs. Rosemary will also address key questions such as what are the challenges of this approach from the perspectives of people with aphasia, family members and clinicians, and how might we address them?

Everyone is welcome so sign up to attend the in-person event here.

Can’t make it to London? Book a ticket to join online panel sessions to hear about UTLISE project and have the chance to ask any questions during the live Q&A.

 

Congratulations, Sonia!

Sonia and Rosemary at UCL Graduation, Summer 2022.

Here at UTILISE we would like to celebrate the graduation of our fabulous intern, Sonia. She has completed a Master of Science degree in Language Sciences (achieving a Distinction, no less!), specialising in Neuroscience, Language and Communication. Sonia has also managed to secure a job working as a rehab support worker, a role in which we are certain that she will thrive. Sonia has shared a few words about her experience with UTILISE (copied below). We are wishing her all the best in her future endeavours.

“Dear UTILISE team,

I would like to say a huge thank you for the amazing support and dedication that you have showed throughout my internship!

Joining the project has been a great opportunity to acquire and develop new research skills, and contribute to aphasia research. I’m beyond grateful for all the input received and I feel so lucky to have been part of such a welcoming and passionate research team.

A big thank you to Rosemary for opening the lab doors and introducing me to her fantastic colleagues. Thank you Fern and Claudia for sharing your precious time and arranging several activities and tasks for me to be involved with. Thank you Jane for the expert advice and tips on how to read brain scans and localise lesions. And finally, thank you to my fellow intern, Ariel, for sharing this journey with me.

Now it’s time to move on to the next step in my career, working as a Rehabilitation Assistant in Early Supported Discharge for stroke. I’m thrilled to join the NHS workforce and support patient with their recovery after stroke.

I wish all the best to the team and I’m sure that our paths will cross again in the future!

Sonia”

ASLTIP "Therapy Talks"

Professor Rosemary Varley at the ASLTIP “Therapy Talks” event (31/03/2022)

The UTILISE team are very grateful to the Association of Speech and Language Therapists in Independent Practice (ASLTIP) group for having us at their Therapy Talks event last week!

Professor Rosemary Varley, principal investigator of the UTILISE project, delivered a talk titled: “What’s new in sentence therapy for aphasia? “I don’t know””.

She gave a whistle-stop introduction to construction grammar, and spoke of how this theory informs our novel behavioural intervention targeting sentence rehabilitation in post-stroke aphasia.

Construction grammar suggests that we are able to store and access groups of words as single units, particularly if these phrases or sentences are “high frequency” (used often), for example: “I don’t know”.

This explains how someone with severe agrammatic expressive aphasia may be still be able to produce some grammatically correct utterances amidst otherwise syntactically disordered speech.

Using this idea of frequency, we are hoping to improve the accessibility and flexibility of these chunks in post-stroke aphasia.

“What’s new in sentence therapy for aphasia? “I don’t know””

Dr Anna Volkmer at the ASLTIP “Therapy Talks” event (31/03/2022)

Our UCL colleague, Dr Anna Volkmer, also delivered a terrific, and topical, presentation about Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), which is a language-led dementia, called: ““Will you still need me when I’m 65?” Dementia, language and speech and language therapy interventions”.

Anna raised the importance of taking a bespoke, person-centred approach to speech and language therapy.

For more of Anna’s work, see her recently published article: “Principles and philosophies for speech and language therapists working with people with primary progressive aphasia: an international expert consensus”.

We are recruiting! What does our study involve?

We’re in full swing here on the UTILISE project!

Claudia and Fern can be found in Chandler House every day now, running therapy sessions and processing lots of data. Even though we’re nice and busy, we are on the look-out for new recruits!

The study is for people who have aphasia, following a stroke, who have difficulties understanding and producing sentences. If this sounds like you, or someone you know, then we need you!

Check out our aphasia-friendly video here for more information about what the study involves.

Our novel computer therapy program is designed to be high-dose, running 3 times a week over 4 weeks (12 sessions). The therapy phase has 3 tasks:

  1. “Listen - Same or Different?”

  2. “Listen - Be Quick!” and,

  3. “Speak - Say Sentences”.

We are also looking for people to have MRI brain scans with us, so we can learn more about who may benefit from this therapy and whether the intervention can even change patterns of brain activity. Don’t worry, you do not have to have the brain scans to take part in the therapy.

If you are interested and would like to know more then check out our webpage for more information.

We would love to hear from you, so contact Fern or Claudia by email or telephone today.