Marcos Llorente recently defended the first thesis of Engineering within the doctorate of research Applied Medical School of Medicine, a research that has been developed for the first time in the laboratory of Medical Engineering.

This is a doctoral thesis that combines Engineering and Otolaryngology, and has been directed by Dr. Secundino Fernandez, Dean of the School, and co-directed by Tecnun professor Adam Podhorski. "The aim of goal was to make it possible to monitor patients outside the hospital environment, and to have available objective data on the use and characteristics of the voice for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes," explains Llorente. 

For this, this engineer, former student of Tecnun, has developed a wearable device, which is placed on the throat and records and measures the main parameters of the voice (fundamental frequency and relative intensity), as well as the time of use of the voice, performing all the processing internally. "This is possible thanks to an accelerometer placed on the skin in the lower part of the larynx that records the vibrations generated by the vocal cords. This information is processed by a low-power microcontroller that is responsible for obtaining the value of the parameters of interest. The low power consumption of this device makes it possible to record for weeks without the need for intervention by the Username", details the researcher.

In this way, the device allows the detection of inefficient phonatory patterns (voice deficiencies or lesions) or at risk of development of organic lesions, while allowing the monitoring of behavior modification after having followed logopedic, pharmacological or surgical treatments.