Department of Life, Health and Environmental Sciences, University of L'Aquila, 67100 L'Aquila, Italy.
IBSAL/BISITE Research Group, University of Salamanca, Calle Espejo 12, Edificio I+D+i, 37007 Salamanca, Spain.
J Integr Bioinform. 2022 Aug 30;19(3). doi: 10.1515/jib-2022-0004. eCollection 2022 Sep 1.
Tinnitus is an annoying ringing in the ears, in varying shades and intensities. Tinnitus can affect a person's overall health and social well-being (e.g., sleep problems, trouble concentrating, anxiety, depression and inability to work). The diagnostic procedure of tinnitus usually consists of three steps: an audiological examination, psychoacoustic measurement, and a disability evaluation. All steps are performed by physicians, who use specialised hardware/software and administer questionnaires. This paper presents a system, to be used by patients, for the diagnosis and self-management of tinnitus. The system is made up of an app and a device. The app is responsible for executing - through the device - a part of the required audiological and psychoacoustic examinations, as well as administering questionnaires that evaluate disability. The paper reviews the quality of the automated audiometric reporting and the user experience provided by the app. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to support the findings. The results show that automated reporting is comparable with that of physicians and that user experience was improved by re-designing and re-developing the acufenometry of the app. As for the user experience, two experts in Human-Computer Interaction evaluated the first version of the app: their agreement was good (Cohen's = 0.639) and the average rating of the app was 1.43/2. Also patients evaluated the app in its initial version: the satisfactory tasks (audiometry and questionnaires) were rated as 4.31/5 and 4.65/5. The unsatisfactory task (acufenometry) was improved and the average rating increased from 2.86/5 to 3.96/5 ( = 0.0005). Finally, the general usability of the app was increased from the initial value of 73.6/100 to 85.4/100 ( = 0.0003). The strengths of the project are twofold. Firstly, the automated reporting feature, which - to the best of our knowledge - is the first attempt in this area. Secondly, the overall app usability, which was evaluated and improved during its development. In summary, the conclusion drawn from the conducted project is that the system works as expected, and despite some weaknesses, also the replication of the device would not be expensive, and it can be used in different scenarios.
耳鸣是一种耳朵里的恼人响声，其色调和强度各异。耳鸣可能会影响一个人的整体健康和社会福祉（例如，睡眠问题、注意力不集中、焦虑、抑郁和无法工作）。耳鸣的诊断程序通常包括三个步骤：听力检查、心理声学测量和残疾评估。所有步骤均由医生完成，他们使用专业硬件/软件并管理问卷。本文介绍了一种供患者使用的系统，用于耳鸣的诊断和自我管理。该系统由一个应用程序和一个设备组成。该应用程序负责通过设备执行所需的部分听力和心理声学检查，并管理评估残疾的问卷。本文回顾了自动听力报告的质量和应用程序提供的用户体验。使用描述性和推断性统计数据来支持研究结果。结果表明，自动报告与医生的报告相当，并且通过重新设计和重新开发应用程序的听力计功能，改善了用户体验。至于用户体验，两位人机交互专家评估了应用程序的第一个版本：他们的一致性很好（Cohen's = 0.639），并且应用程序的平均评分为 1.43/2。同样，患者也在其初始版本中评估了该应用程序：令人满意的任务（听力计和问卷）的评分分别为 4.31/5 和 4.65/5。不满意的任务（听力计）得到了改进，平均评分从 2.86/5 提高到 3.96/5（ = 0.0005）。最后，应用程序的总体可用性从初始值 73.6/100 提高到 85.4/100（ = 0.0003）。该项目的优势有两个。首先，自动报告功能是该领域的首次尝试。其次，应用程序的整体可用性在其开发过程中得到了评估和改进。总之，从进行的项目中得出的结论是，该系统按预期运行，尽管存在一些弱点，但复制该设备也不会昂贵，并且可以在不同场景中使用。
