Can you introduce yourself and share your background in speech therapy and technology development?
My name is Dr. Givona Sandiford (everyone calls me Dr. S.), and I’m the founder of Melospeech Inc., a tech-enabled mobile speech therapy company that started with just me and a handful of families and has now grown to a team of over 60 professionals across multiple states. I’m a certified speech-language pathologist, and I’ve always been passionate about early intervention and improving access for families who are often overlooked by traditional systems.
What makes my journey a little different is that I also dove into tech development early — not because I set out to become a tech founder, but because I saw gaps in the system that needed fixing. When I couldn’t find tools that truly supported the needs of our clinicians and families, I decided to build them myself. That led to the creation of a suite of AI-powered tools like The SLPeaceBot™ and QueryProBot™, designed to automate administrative work and business functions and to make therapy more efficient and accessible.
We’ve now helped thousands of families, saved our team hundreds of hours each week, and even won some major awards for innovation in health and ed tech. It’s been a wild ride, but I’m so grateful to have a good team to support me.
What inspired you to merge speech therapy with technology, and how has your journey led you to where you are today?
I was first inspired to merge speech therapy and tech several years ago. I created my first iOS app in 2012 when a family in Australia reached out about their nonspeaking child. They had read about my dissertation research on Melodic Based Communication Therapy (M.B.C.T.) for nonspeaking autistic children and wanted access to my original songs. At the time, they mentioned their son had an iPad—which was still pretty new back then. I decided to make the approach accessible through an iOS app so they could easily use it. From that point on, whenever I noticed a gap that tech could help solve, I knew exactly what needed to be done.
You’ve developed tools like The SLPeaceBottm and QueryProBottm. Can you walk us through the process of identifying a need in the speech therapy field and turning it into a technological solution?
Yes! I built tools like The SLPeaceBot™ and the QueryProBot™, among others, based on a clear need that we saw had to be filled to continue operating. As a small bootstrapped business, we really had to make every dollar stretch. We had to find a way to make our small team work like a much larger and better-funded one.
The SLPeaceBot, for example, started as an in-house tool. We were tacking on ten minutes of additional paid documentation time to every session, and it was taking our team at least ten minutes to document visits. This meant 60 minutes or more a day was being spent on documentation time! So after a long day at work, the team was still having to do notes because sessions are back-to-back. That meant time away from family, time trying to remember what had happened in the session based on cryptic hand-scribbled notes or just memory, and money spent by our team paying for that time.
Since we do sessions in the home with family involvement or virtually, we typically do a session recap (which is best practice for any service-based field so that those we serve know where they stand). I thought, what if we could turn the session recap into a note? From there, it was just a matter of making it happen with tech. Once we got the prototype out, we had 3 or 4 clinicians pilot it, then released it to the whole team. Eventually, we made it available to all speech therapy providers nationwide because we saw it worked. No more notes done after the session. No more paying for additional notes time. No more trying to remember what each session was like. It was thrilling to see the applications.
Our other tools were made very similarly. Lengthy or expensive processes that we looked to replace through tech! The QueryProBot™ was made to automate our personnel selection process in a similar way. This task used to take us hours per person, and now it is down to 0 minutes on our end for the first interview and 10 minutes for the second interview/offer.
In your experience, what has been the most challenging aspect of introducing new technologies to speech therapy professionals, and how did you overcome this challenge?
I would say that anyone who works in the field of speech-language pathology or education understands that we are a group that is directed by evidence. We want to see strong evidence and read strong evidence before we try anything new. This can mean that we are more skeptical as a group than almost any other group of people, which is a good thing for our patients and those we serve. It means evidence-based practice is a real thing. It is not necessarily a plus, however, for developers. It is difficult to get buy-in from this group. For us, we overcame it by hiring actual speech therapy providers to be our brand ambassadors—people with absolutely no marketing or social media influencer experience—who posted about our tools and shared them with their peers. That peer-to-peer influence has been a great way to overcome skepticism.
In our first version of The SLPeaceBot™, for example, we even created a way for ONLY speech therapy providers to access it for free through a secret question that only they would be able to answer. It was like a secret doorway. Unfortunately, there were a few SLPs who still couldn’t get in. It was very exclusive.
You mentioned using AI API tools to automate documentation. Can you share a specific example of how this has transformed a process in your business, and what advice would you give to others looking to implement similar solutions?
Oh my goodness! Yes! Documentation has been the bane of our existence as healthcare providers ever since it became known that proper documentation saves lives. For speech therapy providers, we’ve historically had to provide services and then spend hours and hours on documentation. It’s been so difficult that some have even considered changing professions, because much of this documentation time ends up being unpaid. I myself have pulled all-nighters on documentation. I knew I had to find a way to cut this out of my team’s schedules.
I already talked about how we did this with the SLPeaceBot™, but we also created another lesser-known tool called The Communication Milestone Screening Protocol: Birth to Five (CMSP:B-5)™. Prior to this tool, report writing took hours—often longer than the one hour allotted for the task. We programmed the tool to help with our assessments and complete the full report in minutes for provider review. That meant our team had more time to share results and recommendations with families.
We had the tool draw from evidence-based resources to assist with recommendations for the provider. It’s my favorite tool, though it’s very niche, so not as well known as our others.
How has your approach to scaling Melospeech(r) across multiple locations evolved, and what technology has been crucial in managing a multi-location speech therapy business?
Our approach has always been to go where we are needed. Our locations have been chosen based on places we learned had limited access to life-changing speech therapy services. With services so impacted during the pandemic, this meant we could go nearly anywhere and make a difference for those unable to access services. And there is still such a huge need worldwide.
Most children with early access to services can begin school ready to learn instead of learning to understand and speak. In terms of tools, one tool that has been essential to our growth is our MeloSuite. This was the first tool I built with our first developer who is now our Lead Developer. He has been absolutely wonderful. He’s currently in school pursuing a Master’s degree in his field and doing research, but he still helps us after his long day is over. He’s been brilliant at creating the algorithms we need to make our tools work—especially back when AI wasn’t as easily accessible as it is now.
It’s important to find a developer who isn’t just skilled at writing code, but who also understands WHY you are writing that code. He is both! This tool, our MeloSuite, automates our referral-to-dispatch process. It even tells us when to hire a new clinician in an area based on the number of declined referrals. It’s what allowed us to grow so quickly, because without it, the tasks it handles would take us days instead of minutes.
You’ve mentioned using self-managed teams in your multi-location business. How does technology support this management style, and what tools have you found most effective?
That’s a really good question. I’m a huge fan of self-managed teams. I believe most adults thrive when they’re given the autonomy to make decisions within established policies and allowed to manage their own schedules with the right scheduling support—rather than being micromanaged. Technology makes this possible by allowing our self-managed teams to communicate daily, track each other’s locations in the field, and offer support with decision-making when needed.
The ability to communicate in real time using chat-like tools is essential for most businesses now, but especially for those like ours that operate remotely and in the field across multiple locations. It’s also important to always have one or two backup communication methods in place—because no tech tool is ever 100% reliable. There’s always a chance of a brief outage, and we never want to risk being disconnected from our team in the field.
Looking ahead, what emerging technologies do you believe will have the biggest impact on speech therapy businesses in the next 5-10 years, and how are you preparing for these changes?
Tools that automate repetitive tasks will be at the forefront for forward-thinking SLPs. I would like to think that Melospeech® will take a lead in making many of these tools.
Based on your experience, what’s the one piece of advice you’d give to speech therapy professionals who are hesitant about adopting new technologies in their practice?
I would say to try it yourself first. After you try it out, then try it with a few more people first for a minimum of 30-45 days. Gradually increase the number of people in your practice who use the tool before adopting it. If you do not do it this way, you risk creating chaos and confusion, and that is very bad for retention of staff and ultimately bad for business. Without staff buy-in, you cannot adequately serve your clients, which is the heart of what we do. Go slow before you go fast!
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Thank you so much for having me! It’s been a journey, for sure, with so much to learn every single day. Shout-out to Shane, Teresa, Joab, Sharece, Nasha, Vishal, and the rest of our tech and development team for their long hours on our tools! Shout-out to our clinical team for being willing to pilot so many tech tools to the benefit of the communities we serve.