Using web services to realize remote hearing assessment.
Background: Internet-based tele-audiology is expected to relieve the dilemma between the lack of resources and high demand of audiological care services. This paper presents a web services based, distributed pure-tone hearing assessment system that improves accessibility of traditionally underserved...
| Published in: | Journal of Clinical Monitoring & Computing Vol. 24; no. 1; pp. 41 - 51 |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Springer Nature
Feb2010
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=105127896&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 105127896 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 13871307 OHC jtl: Journal of Clinical Monitoring & Computing issn: 13871307 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Feb2010 vid: 24 iid: 1 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature place: New York, New York artinfo: ui: 105127896 48126694 NLM19904618 2010574999 10.1007/s10877-009-9208-6 NLM19904618 105127896 ppf: 41 ppct: 10 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P tig: atl: Using web services to realize remote hearing assessment. aug: au: Yao J Wan Y Givens GD Yao, Jianchu Wan, Yongbo Givens, Gregg D affil: East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, USA sug: subj: Hearing Tests Methods Internet Remote Consultation Methods Audiology Methods Audiology Statistics and Numerical Data Computer Communication Networks Computer Systems Hearing Tests Statistics and Numerical Data Remote Consultation Statistics and Numerical Data Software Telemedicine Methods Telemedicine Statistics and Numerical Data ab: Background: Internet-based tele-audiology is expected to relieve the dilemma between the lack of resources and high demand of audiological care services. This paper presents a web services based, distributed pure-tone hearing assessment system that improves accessibility of traditionally underserved groups to audiology care.Methods: The system employs browser-server network architecture to connect patients to audiology specialists through a web server where all application software is hosted. Software on the server is designed with a three-tier approach which makes the system scalable to include other audiological services. Hearing test data are stored in a standard database and can potentially be integrated into established electronic medical records. On the remote patient side, off-the-shelf audiometers are adopted. The Internet connection of these audiometers can be flexibly configured either with or without a computer. Two aspects of the system were tested: (1) the clinical effectiveness of the system: double-blinded experiments were conducted to assess hearing ability of 30 subjects and paired t-tests were utilized to compare assessment results from the remote approach and the conventional setup; and (2) to analyze the system bandwidth requirements, data traffic among the server, the audiometer, and the audiologist terminal was examined with a network monitoring software (wireshark).Results: Paired t-test results have demonstrated that the remote hearing assessment is equivalent in effectiveness to its conventional counterparts at all tested frequencies (P values are in the range of [0.12, 0.94]), and the bandwidth required by the system is less than 1 Mbps, falling within the capacity of average commercial Internet service subscription.Conclusions: The project developed a remote hearing assessment system based on services on a web server. The system minimizes hardware and software requirements on the audiologist's computer and can be realized with regular Internet service subscription. Patient operations involved in hearing assessment are simple; making hearing test services more accessible to those otherwise may not be able to obtain the desired hearing care. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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