Interregional Newborn Hearing Screening via Telehealth in Ghana.

Background: Newborn hearing screening is a vital aspect of the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program, aimed at detecting hearing loss in children for prompt treatment. In Ghana, this kind of pediatric hearing service is available at only one health care facility located in the Greater Accra Region. The current practice in effect has virtually cut-off infants in the other regions from accessing hearing screening and other pediatric audiological services.

Remote hearing screenings via telehealth in a rural elementary school.

Purpose: Telehealth (telepractice) is the provision of health care services using telecommunications. Telehealth technology typically has been employed to increase the level of health care access for consumers living in rural communities. In this way, audiologists can use telehealth to provide services in the rural school systems.

The effect of room acoustics and sound-field amplification on word recognition performance in young adult listeners in suboptimal listening conditions.

Purpose: To compare the speech recognition performance of young adult listeners with normal hearing in 2 college classrooms, only 1 of which met American National Standards Institute (ANSI) S12.60-2002 acoustic standards. Also, differences in speech recognition performance were compared in both classrooms with and without the use of a classroom amplification system.

Providing basic hearing tests using remote computing 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.

Functional hearing in noise: insert earphones vs. supra-aural headphones.

Introduction: Aviators and aircrew members work in hostile listening environments on a routine basis and rely on their hearing for crew coordination, a critical component of rotary-wing aviation. New technology may assist in this endeavor, but will require aviators to have the ability to not only hear in noise, but also to localize warning and other signals. The Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) assesses functional hearing in noise, but has only been normalized using sound field speakers or supra-aural headphones.

Speech intelligibility with helicopter noise: tests of three helmet-mounted communication systems.

Background: Military aviator helmet communications systems are designed to enhance speech intelligibility (SI) in background noise and reduce exposure to harmful levels of noise. Some aviators, over the course of their aviation career, develop noise-induced hearing loss that may affect their ability to perform required tasks. New technology can improve SI in noise for aviators with normal hearing as well as those with hearing loss.