Telerehabilitation for service delivery in speech-language pathology

Communication disorders in adults and children can have a significant effect on their quality of life and on that of their families. Speech-language pathologists face several challenges in providing assessment and treatment services to such people. Challenges include facilitating equitable access to services and providing appropriate management within a changing social and economic context. Telerehabilitation has the potential to deliver services in the home or local community via videoconferencing and through interactive computer-based therapy activities. This form of service delivery has the capacity to optimize functional outcomes by facilitating generalization of treatment effects within the person's everyday environment, and enable monitoring of communication and swallowing behaviours on a long-term basis. A number of image-based telerehabilitation applications have been used in the management of adult neurogenic speech and language disorders, stuttering, voice disorders, speech and language disorders in children, laryngectomy and swallowing dysfunction. Further development of such applications and other computer-based therapies, cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses, and professional education are needed if telerehabilitation is to become an integral part of speech-language pathology practice.