University News Last updated 28 April 2009
A Birmingham City University lecturer is hoping her new method of helping Asian stroke victims will be a success with medical professionals.
Amanda Howett, Senior Lecturer in Speech and Language Therapy, has developed a set of picture cards to help Asian patients whose speech skills have been affected by a stroke. Now Amanda is hoping to sell the cards to other speech specialists so they can use them with their patients.
The cards works patient is shown a card and tries to pronounce the name of the object on it. However the pack developed by Amanda differs from conventional ones because it contains pictures of objects common in the Asian community such as a tabla, a salwa kemise and a chapatti. Amanda and other therapists have found that their Asian clients prefer describing and discussing items from their own culture, helping them to recover from a stroke quicker.
Now Amanda got the opportunity to develop her idea after winning a Birmingham City University Dragon's Den-type competition. She was given some business training and a budget of £5000 under the ‘Enterprising Staff, Enterprising Students' scheme. She was also assigned a Master of Business Administration student to help her market her cards which she hopes speech therapists will buy to use with their Asian clients.
Amanda said: "I think the cards would be very useful to speech and language therapists who work with people from the Asian community. According to The Stroke Association, Asians living in the UK are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and diabetes, which are both major risk factors for strokes.
"But the cards aren't limited to use with people recovering from stroke as they could be useful for therapists who work in day centres for the elderly, with children who have communication difficulties and in schools."