What a Decade of ‘R’ Sound Science Taught Us About the Gap Between Research and Clinical Practice in Speech Therapy
Team: Helen Carey (Tandon ’16), Tara McAllister (Steinhardt), Lindsey Hockel
About the Venture: See The Sounds builds speech visualization technology to support speech-language pathologists and children with speech delays. The product helps clinicians address a difficult speech challenge with performance that exceeds existing tools.
The “R” sound is the most frequently misarticulated sound for English-speaking children. It’s also one of the hardest to treat. Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) may spend years — sometimes a child’s entire elementary school career — working on it, with inconsistent results.
Dr. Tara McAllister has spent more than a decade trying to change that.
But her biggest realization was that science alone won’t change clinical practice; it takes getting out of the lab and into the marketplace.
PROGRESS AND A PROBLEM
Early research suggested that visual-acoustic biofeedback technology could help children get past their speech difficulties.
Instead of just being told that their R sound was incorrect, they could see — in real time — whether small adjustments were bringing them closer to their target. Peer-reviewed evidence for this method has accumulated over time, culminating in a gold-standard clinical trial showing 2.4 times faster progress with biofeedback than traditional treatment.
But SLPs weren’t going to use biofeedback unless they could get their hands on the technology.
Working with developer and designer Helen Carey, Dr. McAllister built something remarkable: the staRt app, or Speech Therapist’s App for /R/ Treatment. It was released as a free download. All the team had to do was sit back and wait for it to change the world — right?
Not exactly. Even though the app was freely available and supported by rigorous research, it mostly lived in research settings. Scientific publications aren’t the most efficient way to get the word out to busy clinicians. When SLPs did try the app, some of them loved it — but others couldn’t get the hang of it and went back to old strategies. Scientific evidence lost out to practical reality: in a caseload crammed with back-to-back sessions, clinicians had no bandwidth for a tool that wasn’t immediately intuitive.
WHAT NEEDED TO CHANGE
The missing piece wasn’t more science. It was a bridge.
Someone who already lived inside the SLP world and understood the R sound not just as an expert, but as a working clinician. Someone who had already built trust with the exact practitioners this app was made for — and who could translate the science into language and workflow that made sense in a therapy room.
That person was Lindsey Hockel, MS, CCC-SLP.
Lindsey runs a digital platform dedicated to educating SLPs on best practices for treating the /r/ sound. Over time she built a large community of clinicians who trust her practical approach to translating research into therapy. She had tried the staRt app and loved it, becoming one of its earliest evangelists.
Talking to Lindsey made it clear that the staRt app didn’t need another research study; it needed to become a product clinicians actually wanted to use.
ENTER ROCK THE R STUDIO
Participating in the NYU Entrepreneurs Challenge has given us clarity on our path forward. We are building Rock the R Studio, a software tool that harnesses the biofeedback core of the staRt app but surrounds it with Lindsey’s clinician-centered tutorials and activities. Individual SLPs are our first target market, with plans to expand to school districts and to parents of children with speech challenges.
When science, technology, and clinical translation are working together from day one — not bolted on after the fact — things move. Features get built that align with the way SLPs actually work. Distribution doesn’t start from zero because the audience already exists. And ideas stop dying in the gap between research and practice.
LESSONS FOR RESEARCH-BACKED STARTUPS
Don’t wait until your science is perfect to find your clinical partners. The gap between research and real-world practice doesn’t close itself; it closes because people who live on both sides of it decide to build the bridge.
We built ours and found the path to real-world impact that had eluded us for more than a decade.
For every child still struggling with the R sound, a better solution may finally be on the way.
Follow the Journey!
📱 Learn More & Join the Waitlist: www.rocktherspeech.com/rock-the-r-studio
📲 Follow Lindsey: @rocktherspeech
📲 Follow Tara: @bitslabstart
