GUWAHATI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati is developing 'Speech Technologies for North Eastern Languages' to improve speech technology tools for healthcare information dissemination. This project is expected to facilitate access to healthcare-related information by the people in the far-flung areas of the Northeast in their own native languages.
The tool will enable the retrieval of healthcare-related information with the help of spoken keyword spotting (KWS) in seven Northeast Indian languages.
The KWS system developed in the project will be able to detect a list of predefined words in a given speech signal of one of the target languages of the project.
A database of health-related information will be created in seven languages spoken in the Northeast as part of the project. This project involves building speech technology tools for healthcare information dissemination in Hindi, English, Assamese, Bangla, Bodo, Manipuri, Khasi, Mizo, Nagamese, and Nepali.
Highlighting the unique aspects of this project, Professor T G Sitharam, Director at IIT Guwahati, said, "This work embodies IIT Guwahati's commitment to work for the local languages and ethnicities of North East India. The interdisciplinary nature of the project and the focus on local languages reflect the spirit envisaged in the National Education Policy, 2020."
The Principal Investigator of the project and head of the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at IIT Guwahati, Professor Rohit Sinha said, "The Institute is committed to developing tools that will facilitate last-mile connectivity and information dissemination to the various communities living in the NE area, in their own languages. This project will be a step towards achieving that aim."
