Dementia is one of the greatest global health challenges, affecting over 50 million people worldwide. Despite this growing burden, a substantial diagnosis gap remains, with approximately three-quarters of people living with dementia not receiving a formal diagnosis.  Current diagnostic approaches rely on a combination of biomarker tests (such as PET imaging or cerebrospinal fluid analysis) alongside comprehensive clinical, cognitive, and neuroimaging assessments, which are often costly, invasive, and time-consuming. Therefore, there is a clear need for scalable, validated digital markers that are sensitive to cognitive decline. 

Telehealth offers a promising solution to address these challenges. The Healthy Brain Hub (HBH) is a telehealth platform designed to screen, triage, and assess individuals with memory concerns, supporting clinicians in the diagnosis and management of cognitive decline and dementia. Building on HBH’s success in delivering remote cognitive assessments, this PhD project, conducted in collaboration with Redenlab, a neuroscience speech biometrics company, investigates how speech and language data collected during telehealth assessments can be used more effectively. 

Aims 

This PhD project has two primary aims. First, it examines how speech and language measures derived from telehealth-administered cognitive assessments relate to cognitive performance. Second, it evaluates the usability and performance of Redenlab’s automated data curation and analytics pipeline in a remote assessment context. 

Methods and impact 

Using data collected through HBH, the project assesses the feasibility and usability of telehealth-based cognitive assessment. Redenlab’s automated pipelines are applied to extract speech and language features, which are then evaluated for their potential in screening for cognitive decline. 

Overall, this research aims to inform the development of scalable, accessible, and clinically meaningful telehealth assessment pathways for adults at risk of cognitive decline.