Exploring Voice Banking as an Alternative Augmentative Communication Strategy for Individuals with Dysphonia,...

This scoping review sought to: (i) review studies involving people diagnosed with dysphonia, aphonia, and dysarthria who have used voice banking technology in a hospital or community setting, and (ii) understand the scope of research surrounding existing voice banking technology and software in the clinical setting.

This scoping review was conducted according to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses extension for scoping reviews. An electronic search of databases, including Ovid MEDLINE(R), Embase (Ovid), APA PsycINFO (Ovid), and CINAHL was conducted. Title, abstract, and full text screening were completed using Covidence (Veritas Health Innovation, Melbourne, Australia) by two reviewers.

After deduplication, 1336 studies underwent title and abstract screening. Of these, the full texts of 65 studies were reviewed, and 23 were included. Three distinct topics were identified in the search: (i) message banking, in which discrete messages or phrases are recorded for later use, without the ability to create novel phrases outside of those previously recorded; (ii) voice banking, in which all the necessary phonemes in the target language are captured, with the goal of generating a personalized synthetic voice that can generate novel phrases; (iii) and voice conversion or voice reconstruction, in which pathologic voices or speech are "converted" into a personalized synthetic voices.

This scoping review summarized the evidence for voice banking technology use in people diagnosed with dysphonia and dysarthria and sought to understand the research landscape of existing types of voice banking technology and software use in a clinical setting. The included papers were highly heterogeneous in terms of the population and type (research vs clinical program vs review/other). There is a pressing need for the publication of clinical programs and models facilitating the adoption of voice banking, especially within populations affected by conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and laryngectomy, to address existing gaps and foster broader implementation and accessibility.