In the latest webinar in the Learning Disability Services Series, Dr Aviva Cohen will be speaking about her company's use of technology to support people who are non-verbal to communicate with their families, friends and support system, including people with learning disabilities.

The Empathic App an API uses Artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse short voice recordings. It is designed for people who use fewer than 20 reliable, functional words; it can reveal if an individual is expressing excitement, frustration or up to 10 emotions. Typically, there is one person who understands each non-verbal person. But there can be many others who don’t know them well enough to identify their emotions. Empathic enables every carer, teacher, family member and friend to understand when a non-verbal individual is enjoying an activity and when they are bored or confused.

The presenter

Dr Aviva Cohen is CEO and co-founder of seamlessCARE, an award winning technology company specialising in practical, easy to use AI tools for healthcare and industry. Aviva completed her cross-disciplinary PhD in 1999. It includes research into philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychology and the history of psychiatry. This work provides insights into psychological and cognitive functioning that inform her current work. In 1994, Aviva began lecturing in Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Communications Theory. She combined her academic work with a career as a Senior Communications Consultant.

In 2006, her husband survived a stroke that left him with a severe brain injury and communication difficulties. This motivated her to create projects to support those living with disabilities. In 2011 Aviva founded the multi-award winning social enterprise, Neuro Hero Ltd. which has developed 19 low cost therapeutic and educational apps for people with severe speech and language difficulties. Aviva was invited to undertake a Marie Curie/ASSISTID post-doctoral research Fellowship 2016-19 hosted by University College Dublin and Queens University Belfast. This led to investment by Enterprise Ireland (EI) and the formation of seamlessCARE Ltd. which received further investment from EI and from Angel investor Frank Dolphin, former chair of the Irish health service.

Accessibility

The webinar will be online only and will be hosted on Microsoft Teams which has some in-built accessibility features, including live captioning. We will share Easy Read joining instructions before the event.

Throughout the event, you can ask questions in the meeting chat. After the presentation, we will have time for questions and discussion where you can ask for clarification.

Please get in touch with me (emily.4.thomas@kcl.ac.uk) with any questions or requests.

Booking

Booking is via Eventbrite.

This series

This is an event in the Learning Disability Services Series based in the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce at King's College London. See all Upcoming Events at the Policy Research Unit.