Liopa reaches milestones in 2021 with lipreading technology

- Expanded recognition of lipreading technology has increased inbound demand by more than 300%
- First commercial sale achieved with Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
- SRAVI won three recognitions this year, underscoring the importance of the technology

BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND – 20 December 2021 – Liopa reached milestones in 2021 with its lipreading technology, culminating in the first commercial sale of its SRAVI app to an NHS Trust. SRAVI is an ‘ultra-easy’ lipreading application that requires just a smartphone. It assists the voiceless by using AI algorithms to read words that they are mouthing.

Some of the milestones Liopa achieved in 2021 include:

- In January, we showcased our SRAVI app at the virtual CES event. A write-up was published in CNET, entitled “Accessibility devices at CES 2021 reflect growing focus on inclusive tech”, 16 January 2021

- In February, our CTO, Fabian Campbell-West, was invited as a speaker at the virtual Voice Summit, where he discussed Voiceless Speech Recognition

- In June, SRAVI was showcased by Vice Magazine, driving increased awareness of the technology in the North American market. “Tech companies are training AI to read your lips” 14 June 2021

- In July, SRAVI was selected as the “Tech for Good Project of the Year” award winner category in the Digital DNA Awards

- In September, SRAVI was certified as a Class I Medical Device and now carries a CE marking

- In September, Liopa calculated that its annual inbound requests to use the technology had increased by more than 300%

- “Liopa wins healthcare contract with new AI lip-reading technology.” 18 October 2021. Liopa and Invest NI announced the first commercial agreement for SRAVI to be used in an NHS Trust. Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is using SRAVI to assist patients in Intensive Care Units to communicate with their caregivers

- In November, Liopa successfully completed Phase 2 of DASA’s Behavioural Analytics Initiative. Liopa delivered a demonstration of how the lipreading could work with keyword spotting in CCTV footage

- In November, Liopa won the Health Tech Digital Awards 2021 - Best Communication Solution for the SRAVI app. Liopa also won the Medical, Life Sciences and Healthcare Award at the Made in NI Awards 2021

- Liopa is constantly looking for new ways to create speech from lip movements. In Q4, Liopa’s core R&D team began work on a “Speech Synthesis” research project aimed at synthetically generating audio to match a speaker’s lip movements. This has the potential to create ‘unlimited vocabulary’ lip reading, previously thought impossible, by using the most advanced Machine Learning techniques

More about Liopa’s SRAVI app
SRAVI brings a voice to the voiceless, by using AI algorithms to decipher speech from lip movements. Patients simply need to mouth words (from a predefined phrase list) into their smartphone’s camera, and SRAVI app will read out what they are trying to say. SRAVI stands for ‘speech recognition app for the voice impaired.’ Throughout the investigation into the app’s usefulness, it was proven that SRAVI reads lips with up to 95% accuracy. Further clinical evidence can be found at www.sravi.ai/evidence.html.