Language therapy that feels like listening.

Structured listening. Embedded exercises. Real-world language practice — beyond the clinic.

The Problem

Aphasia is common, chronic, and underserved

Aphasia impairs the ability to understand and produce language, most commonly after stroke or brain injury. Existing digital tools rely on drills and exercises that demand the very abilities people with aphasia struggle with most. Engagement drops. Practice stops. Recovery stalls.

2M+
people living with aphasia in the US alone — more than Parkinson's disease
~35%
of stroke survivors develop aphasia, facing lifelong language challenges
91%
of stroke survivors report difficulty using their smartphone post-injury (Burns et al., 2022)

Exercise apps improve exercise scores. Milo improves daily life — because the practice is daily life.

How It Works

Therapy, reimagined as audio

Milo delivers podcast-style episodes with speech therapy exercises woven in. Listening is the primer. Production is the practice. Real-world language is the substrate.

Listen

Short, podcast-style episodes designed for cognitive accessibility — with summaries, pacing controls, and adaptive support.

Practice

Embedded therapy exercises — word finding, syntax, rhythm — built directly into each episode by speech-language pathologists.

Progress

Passive engagement signals and quiz performance feed clinicians objective evidence of practice beyond the session.

Beyond Aphasia

Built for aphasia. Designed for what comes next.

Milo is being clinically validated in Germany with people living with aphasia after stroke — the largest, best-defined acquired language population, and our deliberate clinical wedge. But the underlying mechanism — context-supported listening paired with embedded production practice — addresses deficits that recur across a much wider family of acquired language disorders, cognitive-communication disorders, and the cognitive maintenance window before dementia.

Why aphasia first

Aphasia gives us the fastest evidence pathway (DiGA in Germany), the clearest clinical guidelines, and the most defined SLP referral network. Once Milo is validated here, the therapeutic mechanism extends to adjacent populations who today have almost no purpose-built digital tools.

Phase 2 expansion

After Brain Injury

2.87M

hospital visits and admissions for traumatic brain injury every year in the US. Around 7 in 10 brain injury patients in rehab have communication difficulties.

How Milo helps: After a brain injury, listening becomes hard work — attention drifts, working memory tires, comprehension lags. Milo's short audio episodes and embedded practice are designed for exactly this kind of cognitive load.

Sources: CDC TBI Surveillance, 2014; Shorland et al., 2023

Phase 2 expansion

Right-Hemisphere Stroke

50–90%

of people who have a right-hemisphere stroke develop communication problems. Right-hemisphere strokes account for almost half of all strokes — yet no aphasia app is built for them.

How Milo helps: Right-hemisphere strokes affect the bigger picture of language — gist, tone, and conversation flow rather than individual words. Milo's connected-speech format works directly on these skills.

Sources: Ferré & Joanette, 2016; ASHA Practice Portal

Phase 2 expansion

Mild Cognitive Impairment

22%

of US adults aged 65+ have mild cognitive impairment — the stage between healthy ageing and dementia, and a recognised window where speech therapy helps.

How Milo helps: Speech therapists already use spaced practice and reminiscence-style content with this group. Milo delivers the same approach as a daily audio habit — with quizzes that adapt over time.

Sources: Manly et al., 2022 (JAMA Neurology); Lanzi et al., 2022

The Research Behind Milo

Built on peer-reviewed science

Milo is backed by evidence-based research from CHI, the premier venue for Human-Computer Interaction — two studies that directly inspired the app's development.

ACM CHI 2025

Sounds Accessible

Envisioning accessible audio media futures with people with aphasia — establishing the design space for audio-first rehabilitation.

ACM CHI 2026

Deployment Study

Real-world evidence that content relevance — "fit before fix" — drives engagement more than polished accessibility features. The foundation for Milo's therapeutic design.

Get Involved

Milo is in active development

We're running clinical pilot studies in Germany and building toward regulatory approval. If you're a clinician, researcher, or someone living with aphasia — we'd love to hear from you.

Get in touch