Beautiful Voice: Expanding access to personalised speech and language therapy
Find out how Beautiful Voice is using AI technology to transform speech and language therapy and expand access to personalised rehabilition.
Meet Dongli Li, NHS Innovation Accelerator fellow, biomedical engineer and co-founder of Beautiful Voice. Combining a PhD in Healthcare Innovation from the University of Oxford with a passion for improving patient outcomes, she is harnessing AI-powered technology to transform speech and language therapy, helping more people access personalised rehabilitation while supporting clinicians across the NHS.
What is Beautiful Voice and what problem does it solve?
Beautiful Voice (BV) is an innovative web-based medical software platform that helps speech and language therapists deliver more personalised, efficient, and data-driven care. Designed to support a wide range of adult speech and language therapy needs- including voice, speech, language, cognition, and swallowing – BV addresses a critical challenge facing healthcare services: growing demand alongside significant workforce shortages.
Around 20% of speech and language therapy posts are vacant across the NHS, while therapy delivery often relies on manual processes that limit efficiency, consistency, and personalisation. As a result, patients frequently experience long waiting times and receive less therapy than clinical evidence recommends, leading to ongoing communication and swallowing difficulties, reduced independence, social isolation, and barriers to returning to work.
BV helps solve these problems by enabling clinicians to deliver care more efficiently, monitor patient progress remotely, and reduce administrative workload. At the same time, patients gain access to personalised therapy and feedback between appointments, improving engagement and outcomes while helping healthcare services support more people with existing resources.
“Our goal is simple: improve outcomes for patients while helping NHS services reach more people with the resources they have”.
What was your inspiration and motivation?
Dongli’s background is in biomedical engineering and neurological rehabilitation, and throughout her career she worked closely with clinicians and people living with conditions such as Parkinson’s and stroke. When people think about rehabilitation, they often think about walking, movement, or physical recovery. Yet the ability to communicate is fundamental to who we are. Losing the ability to express yourself, join conversations, or connect with family and friends can be devastating.
At the same time, she saw speech and language therapists managing large caseloads with relatively limited technological support compared with many other healthcare professions. Dongli recognised an opportunity to apply engineering and technology in a way that could make a meaningful difference to both patients and clinicians.
Her motivation is seeing the real-world impact of that work, whether it is a patient regaining confidence in their communication or a clinician being able to provide a level of support and continuity of care that was previously impossible.
“What inspired this innovation was seeing how communication difficulties are often overlooked in rehabilitation.”
“What inspired this innovation was seeing how communication difficulties are often overlooked in rehabilitation.”
Why did you become a fellow?
Being selected as an NIA fellow is both an honour and a valuable opportunity. The programme brings together a network of innovators, clinicians, NHS leaders, and advisors with extensive experience in NHS adoption and implementation. While the recognition helps raise our profile in a highly competitive innovation landscape, the greatest benefit is becoming part of a community dedicated to improving healthcare through innovation.
“For a company like ours, that is focused on delivering meaningful impact within the NHS, this shared expertise, support, and learning are incredibly important.”
Looking ahead
Dongli hopes that Beautiful Voice becomes a widely adopted part of speech and language therapy services across the NHS and beyond.
Most importantly, she hopes the innovation can help many more people regain confidence, independence, and quality of life through improved access to therapy. She would also like to see speech and language therapy become increasingly data-driven, enabling clinicians to make more informed decisions while spending more of their time supporting patients and less time on administration.
“Ultimately, success for me would be seeing technology become a routine and trusted extension of therapy, rather than an exception.”
Want to find out more? Visit the innovation page where you can contact the innovator directly, or check out their website.
