Using a Telehealth Medium for Objective Hearing Testing: Implications for Supporting Rural Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Programs

Abstract

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.

Remote Hearing Screenings via Telehealth in a Rural Elementary School

“…In addition, practitioners should implement guidelines established by the American Telemedicine Association (2008) to ensure patient privacy when delivering telemedicine services. A virtual private network (VPN) is ideal for maintaining privacy while data are being obtained through the Internet (Krumm, Ribera, & Schmiedge, 2005). AVPN is similar to a firewall in its ability to protect electronic information, yet it is encoded specifically to be hidden from Internet hackers.…”

Verificação da prótese auditiva realizada face a face e via teleconsulta: medidas repetidas

“…Uma das preocupações com relação à teleconsulta é a consistência e qualidade do envio das informações de um local ao outro. Estudos 15,30,31 relatam falhas no sinal de áudio e na transmissão dos dados do teste realizado à distância, em momentos de pico na rede, quando o tráfego na internet era intenso, fazendo com que a informação enviada pelo computador remoto não chegasse de maneira ótima no ambiente de ondas estacionárias geradas no mesmo. Em consequência, no caso das frequências baixas o tubo sonda posicionado em qualquer lugar do conduto irá medir, essencialmente, um nível de pressão sonora igual ao gerado próximo na membrana timpânica 4 .…”

A Web Services–Based Distributed System with Browser–Client Architecture to Promote Tele-audiology Assessment

“…Others such as Krumm et al have targeted infant's hearing assessment and demonstrated that telepractice may help traditionally underserved rural populations. 3,4 A PC-based audiometer developed by Choi et al utilized the sound card as the tone/speech generator and enabled audiometers to be easily connected to the Internet. 5 The authors share a common view about the future potential of telehearing and believe that there are many more opportunities for 8 Other studies find that 25%-40% of the population aged 65 years or older have some degree of hearing impairment.…”