Remote hearing screening as part of auditory telerehabilitation; A preliminary report

• Main Authors: Hemakom A., Noymai A., Israsena P., Boonyanukul S., Chinnarat C.
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-80052087449&partnerID=40&md5=f193c6392d829dcbba097f33b99117e0; http://cmuir.cmu.ac.th/handle/6653943832/3733
• Institution: Chiang Mai University

It is well known that implementing a universal hearing screening program is one of the most effective ways for hearing impairment prevention/rehabilitaion. With limited resource on both medical and supporting staff especially in developing countries, concepts such as teleaudiometry increasingly come in to consideration. As a work in progress, this paper discusses the system design, service delivery model, and its key component that is a low-cost software audiometer designed to run on computers with moderate computing capability such as cost-effective netbooks. The audiometer employs a good dynamic-range, low-latency professional USB soundcard as the sound source to overcome hardware limitation found in earlier attempts on software-audiometer. The software developed also has extra features such as acoustic calibration, network accessibility, and video conferencing not found on alternatives in the market. A preliminary trial result from our pilot scheme is reported. © 2011 IEEE.