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A tablet-based mobile hearing screening system for preschoolers: Design and validation study
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Metadata
Document Title
A tablet-based mobile hearing screening system for preschoolers: Design and validation study
Author
Yimtae K., Israsena P., Thanawirattananit P., Seesutas S., Saibua S., Kasemsiri P., Noymai A., Soonrach T.
Name from Authors Collection
Affiliations
Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, Thailand; National Electronics and Computer Technology Center, National Science and Technology Development Agency, Klong LuangPathumthani, Thailand
Type
Article
Source Title
JMIR mHealth and uHealth
ISSN
22915222
Year
2018
Volume
6
Issue
10
Open Access
Gold, Green
Publisher
JMIR Publications Inc.
DOI
10.2196/mhealth.9560
Abstract
Background: Hearing ability is important for children to develop speech and language skills as they grow. After a mandatory newborn hearing screening, group or mass screening of children at later ages, such as at preschool age, is often practiced. For this practice to be effective and accessible in low-resource countries such as Thailand, innovative enabling tools that make use of pervasive mobile and smartphone technology should be considered.Objective: This study aims to develop a cost-effective, tablet-based hearing screening system that can perform a rapid minimal speech recognition level test.Methods: An Android-based screening app was developed. The screening protocol involved asking children to choose pictures corresponding to a set of predefined words heard at various sound levels offered in a specifically designed sequence. For the app, the set of words was validated, and their corresponding speech power levels were calibrated. We recruited 122 children, aged 4-5 years, during the development phase. Another 63 children of the same age were screened for their hearing abilities using the app in version 2. The results in terms of the sensitivity and specificity were compared with those measured using the conventional audiometric equipment.Results: For screening purposes, the sensitivity of the developed screening system version 2 was 76.67% (95% CI 59.07-88.21), and the specificity was 95.83% (95% CI 89.77-98.37) for screening children with mild hearing loss (pure-tone average threshold at 1, 2, and 4 kHz, >20 dB). The time taken for the screening of each child was 150.52 (SD 19.07) seconds (95% CI 145.71-155.32 seconds). The average time used for conventional play audiometry was 11.79 (SD 3.66) minutes (95% CI 10.85-12.71 minutes).Conclusions: This study shows the potential use of a tablet-based system for rapid and mobile hearing screening. The system was shown to have good overall sensitivity and specificity. Overall, the idea can be easily adopted for systems based on other languages. © Kwanchanok Yimtae, Pasin Israsena, Panida Thanawirattananit, Sangvorn Seesutas, Siwat Saibua, Pornthep Kasemsiri, Anukool Noymai, Tharapong Soonrach.
Keyword
Hearing loss | Hearing screening | Mobile health | Speech audiometry
Funding Sponsor
National Research Council of Thailand
License
CC BY
Rights
Author
Publication Source
Scopus