The results of this study suggest that school hearing screenings may be provided using telehealth technology. This study did find that 5 students performed differently to pure-tone screenings administered by the telehealth protocol in contrast to on-site hearing screening services. Further research is necessary to identify factors leading to false responses to pure-tone hearing screening when telehealth technology is used. In addition, telehealth hearing screening protocols should be conducted with participants of different age groups and experiencing a wide range of hearing loss to further clarify the value of telehealth technology.

We administered pure tone and otoacoustic emissions testing to subjects in a distant community using remote computing technology. Fifteen men and 15 women ranging in age from 18-30 years were tested. An audiometer was used to measure subject pure tone thresholds. In addition, distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) data were recorded using a portable system. Both systems were interfaced to a PC which was connected to the local area network at Minot State University (MSU). An examiner at Utah State University, 1100 km away, could control both the DPOAE and the audiometer equipment at MSU. Overall, the pure tone means for the face-to-face and telemedicine trials were equivalent at each frequency. Moreover, DPOAE recordings exhibited equivalent results at each frequency for telemedicine and face-to-face trials. These results support the use of remote computing as a telemedicine method for providing pure tone audiometry and DPOAE testing to distant communities.

Telepractice is commonly used in other health professions to dispense a large number of services. These services include diagnostics, rehabilitation, and counseling. Telepractice is increasingly available to practitioners serving rural areas and can be modified for many health applications. Yet telepractice is not widely used by audiologists. This is somewhat surprising because audiology seems poised to offer telepractice using both synchronous and asynchronous technology. Furthermore, telepractice may be particularly effective for enhancing a universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) program in rural areas. Specifically, rural communities often lack the proper personnel and program continuity to serve newborns with hearing loss effectively. Telepractice may be a method that can ameliorate these problems. Presently, Utah State University is evaluating the value of telepractice for UNHS services. Initial data obtained from this project are promising and support the validity of telepractice with infant hearing services. However, research with a much larger group of subjects will be required before telepractice can be used with confidence in a UNHS program.Learning Outcomes: As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to (1) discuss the concept of telepractice, and (2) describe the application of telepractice for universal newborn hearing screening services.

The purpose of this study was to validate administration of the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) via telehealth technology. Two experiments were conducted, each with 20 normal-hearing young male and female college students 18 to 30 years of age. In the first experiment, researchers at two separate on-campus locations (Logan, UT) administered the HINT using ViGO remote-control interactive software over a local area network. In the second experiment, the HINT was administered from a local site (Logan, UT) and from a remote site (Minot, ND) over the Internet using the same technology as described in the first experiment. Data from this study revealed that interjudge and intrasubject reliability at local and remote sites were high. These findings suggest that available technology can be used in administering the HINT at remote or underserved locations as effectively as if the testing were face to face.Learning Outcomes: As a result of this activity, participants will be able to define telehealth, explain the HINT protocol, and justify its use in testing underserved populations at a distance.Telehealth is defined as the provision of health care to consumers at a distant location using an electronic medium. 1,2 Advances in technology, particularly in the last decade, have greatly influenced the healthcare industry. These advances in technology were most obvious with the Internet, networking applications, and personal computer capabilities. In this environment, the field of audiology has witnessed substantial changes in technology as well. Programmable and digital amplification systems have become standard fare in most Audiology

These results demonstrate how meeting the ANSI S12.60-2002 standard, which was written for elementary school classrooms, can benefit young adult listeners in postsecondary classrooms. Also, classroom amplification was shown to improve speech recognition for students across the classroom in both acoustically poor and acoustically sound classroom environments.