An ecosystem of intelligent ICT tools for speech-language therapy based on a formal knowledge model

The language and communication constitute the development mainstays of several intellectual and cognitive skills in humans. However, there are millions of people around the world who suffer from several disabilities and disorders related with language and communication, while most of the countries present a lack of corresponding services related with health care and rehabilitation. On these grounds, we are working to develop an ecosystem of intelligent ICT tools to support speech and language pathologists, doctors, students, patients and their relatives. This ecosystem has several layers and components, integrating Electronic Health Records management, standardized vocabularies, a knowledge database, an ontology of concepts from the speech-language domain and an expert system. We discuss the advantages of such an approach through experiments carried out in several institutions assisting children with a wide spectrum of disabilities.