Heidi Christensen

Heidi Christensen

Professor at the University of Sheffield, UK

CognoSpeak UX

DIn the UK 850,000 people live with dementia. The current economic cost of dementia is £26.3billion. Early diagnosis can improve treatment and reduce anxiety for patients and families, but current diagnostic pathways are inaccurate and overstretched. Alzheimer’s Research UK recently highlighted the need for technological interventions to address these challenges.

Over the last 6 years, Dr Heidi Christensen (AI & speech technology) and Dr Dan Blackburn (neuroscience) have developed an approach to testing for early signs of dementia. CognoSpeakTM is an online tool that engages the patient in a conversation using a talking head and analyses the recorded speech using speech analytics and machine learning. In 2019, the team started collaborating with SME TherapyBox as part of their commercialisation strategy.

Research participants speaking to the CognoSpeak system.

People and Partners

Working with Dr Dan Blackburn and Therapy Box

h3 id=”funder”>Funders</h3>

University of Sheffield EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account; 2022