App captions real-time speech for patients with hearing loss | from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde

When encountering care staff wearing facemasks, people who are deaf or hard of hearing cannot lip read as a way of communicating.

Since most of the approximately 163,000 people in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's area who have hearing loss are older and therefore in the high risk category for COVID-19, staff are using the AVA speech-captioning app to overcome this communications barrier.

The app displays the spoken words in real time on a computer tablet such as an iPad.

This helps patients to:

• understand advice about how to deal with the symptoms of COVID-19 and keep themselves, and others safe
• comply with treatment such as medicine dosage 
• keep to appointments and engage with healthcare professionals
• give you the information you need about their symptoms
• recall the information you have given them, and
• make their own decisions and give valid consent to treatment.

Sources:
http://live.nhsggc.org.uk/media/260737/instructions-for-communication-support-tools-available-on-ipads.pdf
http://live.nhsggc.org.uk/media/260788/121-29-may-2020-_daily-covid-19-update-345pm.pdf