Mediax and Balbus

Balbus, rehabilitation software for the treatment of stuttering, was published in 2000 in its first version by Mediax, a company created for the development of rehabilitation and educational software.

Balbus was created from the intuition of its psychologist/psychotherapist creator, Dr.
Vincenzo Ciccarese, and his strong desire to treat disfluency with effective tools, giving the patient the concrete opportunity to practice daily and correctly, with the aim of learning a mode of fluent language.

Learning a new skill requires systematic, continuous and, above all, immediate feedback that orients and guides the action correctly. In Balbus, this is possible through immediate, uninterrupted performance feedback that allows subjects to correct their work in case of error. In this way, learning is faster and creates the conditions for process automation.

Woman uses Balbus's timed reading
Over time, the stammering student has learned a language mode made up of: blocks, words pronounced in an abrupt and explosive way, phrases full of hesitations and interruptions, long pauses and word substitutions. This model of language, even if dysfunctional, is now present and often very deep-rooted. It is unthinkable that simple facilitation exercises taught and performed in the clinic and the invitation to train at home can be enough to change a consolidated habit.

That is why Balbus breaks away from the traditional method: it aims to change alreadylearned habits, thanks to continuous, systematic training and a system that checks and lets subjects know, at any time of the exercise, how correct their performance was.

What it was and what it has become

Balbus was originally available in two versions: one for professionals, complete with all operational tools, including the ability to set any type of variable for the correct performance of the exercise and a Homework version with exercises and rehabilitation protocols already configured for home training.

Today, thanks to the introduction of new technologies like voice recognition, the Istituto Santa Chiara presents its new unified version of Balbus, which allows the user the full and autonomous use of tools as well as the ability to improve their language quality.

Operation of the old Balbus from Mediax

Creator: Vincenzo Ciccarese

Balbus was created by Dr. Vincenzo Ciccarese, a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist, director of the school of specialisation in cognitive-neuropsychological integrated PCNI in Rome and cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy at the neuropsychological centre in Lecce, teacher since 2003 of “Stuttering assessment and treatment”. He performs clinical activities in the treatment of stuttering at the Istituto Santa Chiara outpatient unit in Rome.

Contact us to solve all your problems with stuttering

Contacts

Do you have questions about how Balbus works? Do you have any doubts about the payment methods? Do you want to request support for the first use? Contact us now, we will respond to all your requests.

Questions or concerns? Contact Us!

Accept the privacy conditions