Do you need artificial intelligence? - Questions to laryngectomees

Objective Artificial intelligence should improve the rehabilitation of cancer patients. What are the needs of laryngectomees?

Method Based on narrative interviews we developed and distributed a questionnaire across the Federal States of Germany. Five complexes (patient, voice/speech, therapy/emergency, daily help, further IT) were disucssed in 29 questions, one add for relatives was possible. Anonymized answers were summarized for desrciptive statistics. We received 151 answers from 293 distributed questionnaires (51.5 %).

Results We included 40 women and 111 men, age 69.3+/-8.2 years. Education: middle 50 %, higher 26 %, university 12 %, without profession 12 %. 23/151 (15 %) aren‘t technophile. Smartphone is daily baseline for 113/151 (75 %). Aims of new technologies should be: 1. Today voice/speech are still bad (2,9/5 points) and should improved (60 % of pat.). 2. Need for help has to be recognized better – in emergencies (60 %), for medical orders (72 %). 3. In daily life patients need smaller devices for aid, for example for inhalation (57 %) and smart-home-solutions, for example for indoor climate (32 %). 4. Further wishes were the development of internal (and protected chat-roomsn (48 %) or a diabled ID card with integrated chip function for further aid (68 %). Problems of voice/speech are the most important for relatives and friends (63 %).

Conclusion AI seems to be more a chance to improve known technique than a dreaming about new therapies in the view of our patients. These needs should be integrated in future research, especially in rehabilitation.

Poster-PDF A-1826.PDF

Publication History

Article published online:
10 June 2020