Self adaptive BCI as service-oriented information system for patients with communication disabilities

A new service-oriented information architecture is presented that can help the communication-disabled to socialize in their private and public environment. The service is designed for physically handicapped people who cannot communicate without expensive custom-made tools. Statistics show that, e.g., in Belgium 1:500 persons suffer from some form of motor or speech disability, mostly due to stroke (aphasia patients). Patients with severe motor or speech disabilities need expensive tailor-made made devices and individualized protocols to communicate. About 1:6000 do have problems with information exchange in their daily practice, such as patients with severe autistic disorders, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Locked-in Syndrome (LIS) and Speech and Language Impaired (SLI) patients, and their communication is often limited to care takers and family, because the interaction with other people through electronic systems often fails. In fact, all these disabled yearn to basically participate in our society. Enhancing the amount of adapted devices and personal care takers has huge consequences and is mostly unfeasible by firm limits in specialists, infrastructure and budget. The quality of life can be graded up by a service-oriented information architecture that supports an on-line Mind Speller^®, i.e., a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) that enables subjects to spell text on a computer screen, and potentially have it voiced, without muscular activity, to assist or enable patients to communicate, but also to provide speech revalidation, as in autism spectrum disorder patients. The Mind Speller^® operates non-invasively by detecting P300 signals in their EEG. With the support of predictive text algorithms, the mind spelled characters will be words and sentences, and even stories (story telling), enabling the communication-disabled to participate in either the physical environment as - by the Internet - the global digital world.