Anne Rowling Speech Consortium continues to expand speech research

Anne Rowling Clinic Speech Consortium: Top left to right: Dr Oliver Watts, Jacob Webber, Chris Fleming Olivia Szczerbakiewicz, Prof Siddharthan Chandran. Front left to right: Prof Suvankar Pal, Dr Johnny Tam, Lynda Tomarelli, Lizzie Freeman, Lovisa Wilhborg

Jul 2026: Using speech to improve the future of neurological care.

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The Anne Rowling Speech dataset continues to grow, bringing together speech recordings from the Digital App for Health & Speech Monitoring (DASH) and NeuroCARE studies to create one of the largest collections of speech data for neurological research. 

The dataset now includes more than 5,500 recordings from 864 participants across over 1,000 assessments, with recruitment targets for people living with motor neuron disease (MND) and healthy volunteers already exceeded. The first DASH participants have also reached two years of follow-up, providing valuable long-term data. 

In 2026, the team launched a new speech recording app in partnership with SpeakUnique, supporting the next phase of research. Early computer models developed through the collaboration show promising results in identifying differences between healthy speech and speech affected by neurological conditions. 

The research has been presented at leading UK and international conferences, helping to build new collaborations and advance the development of speech technologies that could improve the diagnosis and monitoring of neurological conditions. 


Links 

Find out more about the DASH project

Learn about the NeuroCARE project

Read about the Everyday Devices pilot study

Visit SpeakUnique (external website)


Image courtesy of the Anne Rowling Clinic Speech Consortium (Back row left to right: Oliver Watts, Jacob Webber, Chris Fleming, Olivia Szczerbakiewicz, Prof Siddharthan Chandran. Front row left to right: Prof Suvankar Pal, Christine Weaver, Johnny Tam, Lynda Tomarelli, Lizzie Freestone, and Lovisa Wihlborg)

This article was published on: Tuesday, 21 July, 2026
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