Dr. Raksha Mudar
With global aging, there is a growing sense of urgency to develop effective interventions for supporting and maintaining brain health and minimizing the risk of dementia in older adults. This talk will summarize the current body of evidence on the benefits of strategy-based cognitive engagement and social engagement interventions for supporting brain health in older adults, and ways to incorporate them into clinical practice.

Dr. Kary S Kublin
In this session, Dr. Kublin will share key strategies for building a foundation for nonverbal and verbal communication in young children with autism. Dr. Kublin will discuss ways to support emotional regulation using a child's interests and preferred modalities. She will offer examples of how everyday activities can be used to encourage a child’s active engagement with others. Active engagement describes authentic interactive exchanges, and it is an essential condition for social learning and reciprocal communication with others. By using familiar routines – the activities that happen daily, like eating, dressing, and playing – communication opportunities can be created and repeated often. The interaction can be child-led, meaningful, and fun. This approach relies on clinicians partnering with parents, caregivers, and teachers to identify and structure interventions that can have large and lasting positive impacts.

Ms. Namrata Pai
In this session, Ms. Namrata Pai will share a Dynamic assessment framework developed by her for Young & Older Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

This assessment framework focuses on Evidence based practices by combining research evidence with clinical evidence. It emphasises on understanding the sensory system of the student to identify key learning objectives through relationship based Child-led intervention in comparison to the traditional compliance based adult directed model. Ms. Namrata will offer practical, objective & Goal oriented measures for maintaining Procedural and Qualitative fidelity in the assessment.

A visual representation of the assessment outcome model is discussed as it simplifies the understanding of the IEP for the family and aids in successful parent partnership.

Dr. Amy Glaspey
Measuring speech skills and documenting development over time poses many challenges for clinicians; however, these challenges may be addressed by applying a dynamic assessment approach where children are provided with scaffolding during the assessment process when they exhibit speech sound errors. With dynamic assessment rather than traditional static assessments, clinicians may better determine a child’s current speech skills, differences from other learners, and responsiveness to instruction. Clinicians may then be better able to tailor their treatment to each child’s specific needs. In this presentation, the foundational principles of dynamic assessment will be summarized. The application of dynamic assessment to speech sound disorder will also be emphasized through presentation of the Glaspey Dynamic Assessment of Phonology. Current research, clinical applications, and implementation of dynamic assessment procedures will be highlighted.

Dr. Chaya Nanjundeswaran (Guntupalli)
Ms. Vrushali Desai
At any given time, 3-9% of the general population experience a voice disorder. A thorough assessment and an appropriate treatment are imperative for individuals presenting to our clinics with a voice disorder. This session will take a clinical perspective on the treatment of voice disorders. Two clinicians from different clinical settings will discuss various pathologies, the underlying physiology, and present an eclectic and physiological based approach to the appropriate intervention of individuals with voice disorders. Identifying your patient as an individual from the ICF perspective and the importance of evidence-based practice will also be emphasized. A summary of best practices in the rehabilitation of individuals with varied voice disorders will be presented.

Mr. Milind Sonawane
Like many other fields Speech-language pathology has not been left untouched by the rapid innovation and transformation of technology. Increased use of digital tools and technologies can improve speech therapy delivery, enhance learning experiences, and better incorporate families, caregivers, and teachers into a child’s speech therapy journey. COVID has forced SLP’s to switch using synchronous and asynchronous technology to support therapy and continue to provide direct patient care. In this presentation, we will see how SLT’s are making use of new and emerging technologies such as IPad’s, apps, AI, digital health care technologies, smart speaker technologies, computer games and websites can be used to support success in achieving therapeutic, educational, learning, clinical supervision and rehabilitative goals with clients, families and fellow SLP’s.

Ms. Pratiksha Gupta
Technology, health care and education have converged to give birth to telepractice which is a revolutionary approach to treating patients with communication disorders. Although telepractice has been around for a much longer time, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic catalysed the use and value of telepractice among service providers and consumers.

Telepractice has been identified as a potential mode of intervention for various communication disorders across age spans. The advanced technology used in telerehabilitation creates greater accessibility to resources, people, and information. These advancements also lead to consideration on security and confidentiality of information. Research on telepractice has also opened new doors for exploring digital tools, methodologies and systemic approaches in service efficacy. Artificial Intelligence is a key driver of growth and innovation in all industries today. AI based solutions in Speech Pathology are being researched and are creating momentum for clinical implications.

In my presentation, I will discuss how these changing times demand new skills for telepractice. I address ethical concerns behind telepractice in India, considerations for client selection and I also give an introduction to AI based solutions for communication disorders. I share instructional strategies that challenge clinicians to move beyond their traditional views of speech language pathology towards adopting healthier digital approaches that are the need of the new world.

Dr. Erin M. Picou
Adults with permanent hearing loss demonstrate a reduced range of emotional responses - they report feeling less happy (and less unhappy) than their peers, in response to sounds. This could be problematic because a wide range of emotions are typically and expected in daily life, such as when listening to music, consoling a crying friend, or investigating strange noises in the house. Yet, little is known about how to optimize hearing aid fittings to improve the range of emotional responses from listeners. This presentation will review some fitting decisions that might improve emotion perception, including bilateral fittings, increasing the overall level, and increasing access to high frequency cues. Among these decisions, only increasing high frequency audibility has been shown to improve emotional responses. Clinical implications of these results will be discussed, in addition to directions for future research.

Dr. S. P. Goswami
The presentation is aimed to provide an outline of the scope of Speech-Language Pathologists in the field of gerontology. It will cover the basics and fundamentals of gerontology from Speech-Language Pathologist’s point of view and the need for Speech-Language Pathologists to understand the dynamics of ageing. Further, the relevance of communication in improving the quality of life of older persons will be highlighted.

Dr. Mark Onslow
The adverse effects of persistent stuttering during adolescence and adulthood are well known. They include mental health issues and impaired educational and occupational outcomes. Consequently, there is a consensus in the field that early intervention during the pre-school years is best practice for the disorder.

That being the case, this presentation overviews three key research findings that clinicians need to understand and apply to clinical practice. First, three treatments for early stuttering are supported by randomised controlled trial evidence. The three treatments are overviewed, and the strengths and weaknesses of each are outlined. Second, pre-schoolers who stutter are at risk of developing mental health issues. The evidence for this is outlined and its clinical importance is discussed. Finally, some children with early stuttering will recover naturally. The clinical application of this research finding will be discussed, with reference to the timing of early intervention.

Dr. De Wet Swanepoel's
Telehealth technologies and service-delivery models for accessible and affordable hearing care in communities will be presented. These include using low-cost clinical technologies on a smartphone for point-of-care diagnostics, supported by artificial intelligence, to enable decentralized community-based services. Incorporating automated testing, advanced measures of environment and test-operator quality, cloud-based surveillance and reporting, and a simple user interface allow minimally trained health workers to facilitate services at low-cost. New advances can triage at-risk patients for more in-depth investigations leaving more than 80% of adult hearing losses to potentially benefit from community-based care. Incorporating hearing aid provision within mHealth supported service-delivery models enable point-of-care hearings services and community-based support. Current examples of innovative service-delivery models in low- and middle-income countries will be presented.

Dr. Vidya Ramkumar
A systematic needs and planning assessment is considered critical prior to large scale program implementation of new interventions to avoid costly implementation errors. This presentation will describe the importance of understanding stakeholder readiness and their need for telepractice. The tools and methods to conduct such an assessment will be briefly discussed. An example of such an assessment will also be shared.

Dr. Eldre Beukes
Ways of providing accessible and evidence-based interventions are paramount for audio-vestibular conditions. Remote interventions such as Internet-interventions are one means of providing cost-effective rehabilitation. The COVID-19 pandemic has made such interventions more acceptable both to professionals and to patients, however, few of these interventions exist. To identify the evidence-based for internet-based interventions a systematic review and metaanalysis was done. This talk outlines the findings in relation to internet-interventions focused on hearing loss, tinnitus and vestibular problems and the implications of these findings.

Dr. Vinaya Manchaiah
The way in which we offer hearing care to our patient population was rather stable. However, several forces (e.g., advancements in technology, regulatory changes, changes in patients needs and preferences) have made us reconsider the service delivery models used with audiology. Use of telehealth technologies and innovations in service delivery models has grown enormously over the last decade and will continue to grow in the future. This talk provides an overview on general trends in teleaudiology. The talk covers: (a) need for accessible and affordable hearing healthcare, (b) telehealth models that are applicable to audiology, and (c) general trends that are relevant to teleaudiology and virtual hearing care.

Mr. Prasanna S Hegde
In spite of the fast-growing interest of SLPs in the field of dysphagia and the awareness of their role in dysphagia assessment and intervention by the medical fraternity, inadequate and non-uniform skills and knowledge in dysphagia has restricted SLPs to command the field.

It is challenging to transfer knowledge, increase exposure for young practitioners to create an effective approach in skill transfer for dysphagia assessment and management. The ultimate aim is to create a uniform dysphagia practice protocol that will be at par with the global standards. This will provide SLPs the competence and confidence to deliver services for individuals with dysphagia by choosing the best options and making the right decisions. This also will prove more useful than ever at present in the midst of a pandemic that has redefined our role in delivering healthcare.

Efforts have been made at institutional, organizational and at an individual level to bring about change in the current status of practice in Dysphagia Rehabilitation. Institutions, clinical as well as academic, with decent clinical practice of dysphagia management, are conducting didactics, seminars, workshops and webinars. There are deglutology sub speciality programs conducted by associations across the medical domains such has head and neck oncology, paediatrics, and neurology. A recent development is formation of Society of Feeding and Swallowing Disorders which is set to change the landscape of Dysphagia Practice in India.

Currently in India, there are institutions offering fellowship and certificate courses in onco-deglutology and specialized courses for instrumental evaluation. Many hospital setups and experts in this area are also opening up for observership and internship programs which may enhance the tide towards the practice of dysphagia.

A capacity building program, ECHO Dysphagia, has been initiated which runs on the modus operandi to move knowledge through didactic sessions by experts and clinical case discussions among hub and spokes. This also facilitates academic and research collaboration, education and training, and support systems for dysphagia clinicians across India. ECHO Dysphagia also provides an opportunity to network amongst SLPs of different regions, training backgrounds, and guiding clinicians to make the optimal use of limited resources in the country.

In the coming days, it will not be a surprise to see many dysphagia clinics in private practice. However, much has to be accomplished to see this seemingly sensitive sub speciality of Speech Pathology attain its fullest potential.