Over 150 researchers, students and industry professionals attended the UK and Ireland Speech (UKIS) Workshop 2026 at King’s College London, with a further 50 participants joining a dedicated tutorial day focused on speech technologies for healthcare and artificial intelligence.
Hosted by the King’s Voice and Speech Processing for Health Lab and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre: Maudsley, the three-day event, brought together experts from across the speech science and speech technology community to showcase the latest advances in speech AI, clinical applications, accessibility and language technologies.
The workshop took place on 22–23 June at the Strand Campus, followed by a tutorial session on 24 June at the Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre on the Denmark Hill Campus.
Speech research and technology in healthcare
Now in its thirteenth year, the annual UKIS workshop is a key forum for those working in speech science and speech technology. This year’s programme highlighted the growing impact of speech and language technologies in healthcare, accessibility, multilingual communication and responsible AI.
The event opened with a keynote address from UCLA’s Professor Abeer Alwan, who spoke on advancing inclusive speech AI for diverse, low-resource and clinical populations. On the second day, Professor Richard Cave from UCL delivered a keynote exploring the importance of developing speech recognition technologies that reflect the languages people actually speak.
Healthcare and clinical innovation featured strongly throughout the programme. Researchers presented work examining the use of speech as a biomarker for conditions including Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and mental health disorders, reflecting growing interest in voice-based technologies that could support earlier diagnosis, monitoring and personalised care.
It was an absolute pleasure to host the UKIS workshop and bring together researchers and industry experts from across the UK and Ireland, providing a valuable space for the speech science and speech technology community to share work and strengthen connections. As AI continues to reshape what is possible within the speech technology space in particular, such conversations are vital.
Dr Nick CumminsSenior Lecturer in Speech Analysis and Responsible AI in Health at IoPPN, King’s College London
He continued: “As a leading centre for this work, King’s and the NIHR BRC: Maudsley are committed to ensuring these technologies are developed and adopted responsibly within healthcare, with robust evidence and meaningful patient involvement at their core.”
Speech Technology Working Group
The UKIS workshop comes at an opportune time as NIHR BRC: Maudsley has recently initiated a cross-BRC Speech Technology Working Group, which is a multidisciplinary network that brings together academia, healthcare, industry, and lived-experience partners to advance the research, evaluation, and responsible adoption of speech and voice technologies in clinical research and healthcare.
Panel discussion hosted by King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence, titled Shaping the Future of UK and Ireland Speech AI Through Cross-Sector Collaboration
Keynote speaker: Professor Richard Cave, UCL
Keynote speaker: Professor Abeer Alwan, UCLA
Collaboration and diversity
Across the two-day workshop, attendees engaged with nearly 90 poster presentations and oral talks covering topics including automatic speech recognition, speech synthesis, deepfake detection, speech biomarkers for physical and mental health conditions, dementia monitoring, dysarthria assessment, multilingual technologies, fairness and bias in AI systems, and emerging applications of large language models.
The workshop concluded with a panel discussion hosted by King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence, titled Shaping the Future of UK and Ireland Speech AI Through Cross-Sector Collaboration. The session brought together leading experts from King’s College London, the University of Southampton, the University of Edinburgh, Oxford Wave Research, Curriculum Associates AI Labs, Blueskeye AI and the University of Nottingham to discuss opportunities and challenges facing the field.
This event at King’s College London is an excellent example of how our BRC fosters collaboration and discussions across academia, healthcare and industry. Speech research and technology is a hugely exciting area and with the developments in AI it has potential to contribute to the UK (life sciences) economy. As such it is essential to bring all stakeholders together to ensure it develops effectively, efficiently and ethically.
Professor Richard DobsonDeputy Director at NIHR BRC: Maudsley and theme lead for Informatics at the BRC
A new addition to this year’s programme was the UKIS Tutorial held on 24 June. Attended by around 50 students and early-career researchers, the session focused on current advances in speech technologies for healthcare and included practical training in feature extraction, modelling and speech data analysis.
The strong attendance at both the workshop and tutorial reflects growing momentum in speech and language technologies, particularly in areas where AI can support healthcare, accessibility and communication. By bringing together researchers from multiple disciplines and sectors, UKIS 2026 provided a valuable platform for sharing knowledge and shaping the future direction of speech AI research across the UK and Ireland.
Thanks to the event’s sponsors
King’s Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences, Amazon, AI Labs Curriculum Associates, Oxford Wave Research Ltd, Apple, the King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Blueskeye, RADAR-base, SpeakUnique and Visual Thinking. Thanks to our captioning partner, Speechmatics.
