Biography

Vicky Young completed a Masters of Health Science in Clinical Engineering in the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) at the University of Toronto. Her Masters work was in the field of sensory communication and clinical engineering and focused on pre-clinical trials of a novel real-time distortion product otoacoustic emission device. Vicky holds undergraduate degrees in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo and Biology from Dalhousie University. Vicky’s experience is in the field of health technology management, research development & design and planning & coordination.

Vicky began her doctoral studies in 2007 with the Department of Rehabilitation Science in collaboration with IBBME. She is also a CIHR Fellow in Health Care, Technology and Place. Her research focuses on improving the human to computer communication interface of an automated, speech-based, and intelligent personal emergency response system (aPERS) for older adults. Specifically, she is conducting analyses on real, recorded personal emergency response calls to better characterize these events which will assist in furthering the development of specifications for the communication component of the aPERS. She is also identifying key words and phrases used in personal emergency response communications that will be important in the development of the speech recognition component of the aPERS. Finally, she is also developing a database of Canadian adult regular and emergency speech (CARES) which will contain speech samples of younger and older voices in mock emergency situations derived from the recorded calls. The CARES database will be used for speech recognition training and aPERS testing. This project is part of a larger project, the HELPER System (Health, Evaluation, and Logging for Personal Emergency Response), which also incorporates fall detection and daily activity monitoring using computer vision techniques.

Selected Publications

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

Young V, Mihailidis A. (2013). The CARES Corpus: A database of older adult actor simulated emergency dialogue for developing a personal emergency response system. International Journal of Speech Technology. 16:55-73.

Young, V., & Mihailidis, A. (2010). Difficulties in Automatic Speech Recognition of dysarthric speakers and the implications for speech-based applications used by the elderly: A literature review. Assistive Technology Journal, 22:99-112.

Hamil, M., Young, V., Boger, J. and Mihailidis, A. (2009). Development of an automated speech recognition interface for personal emergency response systems. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 6(26).

Peer Reviewed Conference Proceedings

Young V, Mihalidis A. (2014). Towards the development of a speech-based and intelligent personal emergency response system: Identification of key conversational features in personal emergency response calls. The 9th World Conference of Gerontechnology, ISG 2014.

Young, V., & Mihailidis, A. (2011). Developing the CARES Corpus for Improving Personal Emergency Response Systems. Festival of International Conferences on Caregiving, Disability, Aging and Technology (FICCDAT: RESNA/ICTA), June 5-8, 2011.

Young, V., Harrison, R., Dolan, A. and Kunov, H. (2000) Comparison of three distortion product otoacoustic emission devices, Journal of the Canadian Acoustical Association, Acoustic Week Canada Proceedings 2000, 28, 3: p136-137.

Peer Reviewed Oral Presentations

2011 (June 5-8). The CARES Corpus: A Database of Older Adult Voices for Developing Speech Recognition Systems. Festival of International Conferences on Caregiving, Disability, Aging and Technology (FICCDAT: RESNA/ICTA3), Toronto.

2010 (May 27-30). The Development of an Intelligent Personal Emergency Response System: Identification of Key Vocabulary and Characteristics of Emergency-Based Dialogue, International Society for Gerontechnology (ISG) Conference, Vancouver.

2010 (May 19). The Development of an Intelligent Personal Emergency Response System: Identification of Key Vocabulary and Characteristics of Emergency-Based Dialogue, Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering Scientific Day, University of Toronto.