Yao Jianchu Jason, Yao Daoyuan, Givens Gregg
1 Department of Engineering, College of Engineering and Technology, East Carolina University , Greenville, North Carolina.
2 Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, East Carolina University , Greenville, North Carolina.
Telemed J E Health. 2015 Sep;21(9):697-704. doi: 10.1089/tmj.2014.0171. Epub 2015 Apr 28.
Millions of global citizens suffering from hearing disorders have limited or no access to much needed hearing healthcare. Although tele-audiology presents a solution to alleviate this problem, existing remote hearing diagnosis systems support only pure-tone tests, leaving speech and other test procedures unsolved, due to the lack of software and hardware to enable communication required between audiologists and their remote patients. This article presents a comprehensive remote hearing test system that integrates the two most needed hearing test procedures: a pure-tone audiogram and a speech test.
This enhanced system is composed of a Web application server, an embedded smart Internet-Bluetooth(®) (Bluetooth SIG, Kirkland, WA) gateway (or console device), and a Bluetooth-enabled audiometer. Several graphical user interfaces and a relational database are hosted on the application server. The console device has been designed to support the tests and auxiliary communication between the local site and the remote site.
The study was conducted at an audiology laboratory. Pure-tone audiogram and speech test results from volunteers tested with this tele-audiology system are comparable with results from the traditional face-to-face approach.
This browser-server-based comprehensive tele-audiology offers a flexible platform to expand hearing services to traditionally underserved groups.
全球数百万听力障碍患者获得急需的听力保健服务的机会有限或根本没有机会。尽管远程听力诊断学提供了缓解这一问题的解决方案，但由于缺乏实现听力学家与其远程患者之间所需通信的软件和硬件，现有的远程听力诊断系统仅支持纯音测试，语音和其他测试程序仍未得到解决。本文介绍了一种综合远程听力测试系统，该系统集成了两种最需要的听力测试程序：纯音听力图和语音测试。
这个增强系统由一个Web应用服务器、一个嵌入式智能互联网蓝牙（®）（蓝牙技术联盟，华盛顿州柯克兰）网关（或控制台设备）和一个支持蓝牙的听力计组成。应用服务器上托管着几个图形用户界面和一个关系数据库。控制台设备的设计目的是支持本地站点和远程站点之间的测试及辅助通信。
该研究在一个听力实验室进行。使用这个远程听力诊断系统对志愿者进行的纯音听力图和语音测试结果与传统面对面测试方法的结果相当。
这种基于浏览器 - 服务器的综合远程听力诊断学为将听力服务扩展到传统上服务不足的群体提供了一个灵活的平台。
