The R&D 100 Awards chooses 100 disruptive technologies from world-renowned industry-academia-research institutes each year. So far, thousands of inventions that can change the world and make it a better place have been chosen. In 2025, with support from the Department of Industrial Technology, MOEA, the Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC) won awards in two categories: Software/Services and Corporate Social Responsibility, for its AI-Guided Interactive Speech-Language Therapy System, ranking along with world-renowned institutions like the National Energy Technology Laboratory, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Yale University. These awards globally recognize MIRDC’s strong R&D capabilities and enhance Taiwan’s position and image in industrial tech.

Taiwan has only about 2,200 speech-language pathologists, far too few to serve the hundreds of thousands of children with language delays or autism. This shortage leads to missed opportunities during the critical period for improving language abilities. Current products primarily support vocalization or articulation but do not effectively improve children’s expressive or receptive language skills. The AI-Guided Interactive Speech-Language Therapy System integrates gamified therapy modules, generative AI guidance, and post-session language ability assessments to deliver a personalized, continuous, and clinically oriented new future. Gamified therapy lesson plans incorporate commonly used clinical materials, including imitation techniques, picture cards, picture books, and dialogues, into interactive games that align with language therapy goals, such as naming, sentence construction, comprehension, and response, allowing children to learn progressively with suitable lessons. Generative AI can quickly understand the meaning behind a child’s responses and then create therapeutic techniques—such as imitation, demonstration, expansion, and extension—that suit the specific context, effectively helping children develop accurate and complete expressions, making it an essential tool for intensive home training. After each session, the system automatically initiates a post-training assessment that measures the child’s performance across 20 objective indicators, including semantics, grammar, and pragmatics. This helps therapists and parents to objectively and accurately monitor training effectiveness and progress.

Chia-Ju Liu, Chairman of MIRDC, expressed gratitude to Tzyy-Ker Sue, Director of MIRDC’s Medical Devices R&D Service Department, as well as Bo-Wei Pan, Bo-Hong Zheng, and Pei-Rong Zeng from the engineering team. She also acknowledged the contributions of six collaborating academic and medical institutes: National Kaohsiung Normal University, Ever Blessing Clinic, Hungkung University, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Asia University, and MacKay Memorial Hospital, for their commitment to advancing socially impactful technologies. Winning another R&D 100 Award this year—along with the Special Recognition: Corporate Social Responsibility Silver Award—greatly boosts the team’s sense of purpose. As the team envisioned during development, “We will guide every child toward the realm of communication, like stars illuminating their path.” MIRDC aims to transform speech-language therapy through digital tools, becoming a strong support for children on their language-learning journey.