Ambulatory Monitoring of Daily Voice Use

Many common voice disorders are chronic or recurring conditions likely to result from faulty and/or abusive patterns of vocal behavior. Such behaviorally based disorders can be difficult to assess accurately in the clinical setting and potentially could be much better characterized by long-term ambulatory monitoring of vocal function as individuals engage in their typical daily activities. Ambulatory monitoring also could provide new insight into the actual role of voice use in common disorders and missing quantitative data on what constitutes normal levels of daily voice use for different groups of individuals, activities, and occupations. This report describes the motivation, previous development efforts, current state-of-the-art technology, and future directions in ambulatory monitoring of voice use. There is growing interest in developing medical devices for monitoring the function of body systems while individuals engage in their normal daily activities (vocation, avocation, etc.) to help facilitate the detection/diagnosis of abnormalities that may not be readily apparent during routine clinical examinations. Versions of systems exist for ambulatory monitoring of heart, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and brain function. One major impetus for expanding ambulatory monitoring capabilities is the desire to provide remote surveillance of health conditions/status and facilitate prevention and/or timely intervention, particularly as an aging population strives to live independently. One area that has received recent attention has been in the development of devices for ambulatory monitoring of daily voice use. This area of focus has been motivated by the fact that many common voice disorders are chronic or recurring conditions likely to result from faulty and/or abusive patterns of vocal behavior, which produce phonotraumatic vocal fold