Abstract

Abstract: Cognitive decline is a pressing and growing global health challenge. One in which it is increasingly clear that appropriately designed digital health technologies can provide solutions that offer easy-to-use, home-based, and accurate assessments to help healthcare professionals diagnose conditions like dementia. This talk will outline the major challenges in detecting and tracking cognitive health including challenges of co-morbidities and bias and outline recent state-of-the-art research from current projects at the University of Sheffield (UK)’s Speech and Hearing (SPandH) & Healthcare lab.

Bio: Heidi Christensen is a Professor in Computer Science at the University of Sheffield (UoS), United Kingdom. Her research interests are in the use of speech and language processing in the healthcare domain. Her core expertise is in the detection and tracking of people’s physical and mental health including verbal and non-verbal expressions of emotion, anxiety, depression and neurodegenerative conditions in e.g., a therapeutic or diagnostic setting.