Daily sound exposure of hearing aids users during COVID-19 pandemic in Europe.

Introduction: This study aimed to investigate the daily sound exposure of hearing aid (HA) users during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a specific focus on the impact of different governance intervention levels.

Methods: Modern HA technology was employed to measure and compare the sound exposure of HA users in three distinct periods: pre-pandemic, and two 14-day periods during the pandemic, corresponding to varying levels of governance interventions. The study sample comprised a total of 386 HA users in Europe during the pandemic, with daily sound exposure data collected as part of the main dataset.

The adaptation of noise-induced temporary hearing threshold shift predictive models for modelling the public health policy.

Objectives: It has been shown that monitoring temporary threshold shift (TTS) after exposure to noise may have a predictive value for susceptibility of developing permanent noise-induced hearing loss. The aim of this study is to present the assumptions of the TTS predictive model after its verification in normal hearing subjects along with demonstrating the usage of this model for the purposes of public health policy.

Material And Methods: The existing computational predictive TTS models were adapted and validated in a group of 18 bartenders exposed to noise at the workplace.

Investigating the Provision and Context of Use of Hearing Aid Listening Programs From Real-world Data: Observational Study.

Background: Listening programs enable hearing aid (HA) users to change device settings for specific listening situations and thereby personalize their listening experience. However, investigations into real-world use of such listening programs to support clinical decisions and evaluate the success of HA treatment are lacking.

Objective: We aimed to investigate the provision of listening programs among a large group of in-market HA users and the context in which the programs are typically used.

EHealth and Its Role in Supporting Audiological Rehabilitation: Patient Perspectives on Barriers and Facilitators of Using a Personal Hearing Support System With Mobile Application as Part of the EVOTION Study.

Background: Hearing loss is a major public health challenge. Audiology services need to utilise a range of rehabilitative services and maximise innovative practice afforded by technology to actively promote personalized, participatory, preventative and predictive care if they are to cope with the social and economic burden placed on the population by the rapidly rising prevalence of hearing loss. Digital interventions and teleaudiology could be a key part of providing high quality, cost-effective, patient-centred management.

Clustering Users Based on Hearing Aid Use: An Exploratory Analysis of Real-World Data.

While the assessment of hearing aid use has traditionally relied on subjective self-reported measures, smartphone-connected hearing aids enable objective data logging from a large number of users. Objective data logging allows to overcome the inaccuracy of self-reported measures. Moreover, data logging enables assessing hearing aid use with a greater temporal resolution and longitudinally, making it possible to investigate hourly patterns of use and to account for the day-to-day variability.

Real-World Hearing Aid Usage Patterns and Smartphone Connectivity.

Data for monitoring individual hearing aid usage has historically been limited to retrospective questionnaires or data logged intrinsically in the hearing aid cumulatively over time (e. g., days or more).

The everyday acoustic environment and its association with human heart rate: evidence from real-world data logging with hearing aids and wearables.

We investigate the short-term association between multidimensional acoustic characteristics of everyday ambient sound and continuous mean heart rate. We used in-market data from hearing aid users who logged ambient acoustics via smartphone-connected hearing aids and continuous mean heart rate in 5 min intervals from their own wearables. We find that acoustic characteristics explain approximately 4% of the fluctuation in mean heart rate throughout the day.

Public health policy-making for hearing loss: stakeholders' evaluation of a novel eHealth tool.

Background: Hearing loss (HL) affects 466 million people of all ages worldwide, with a rapidly increasing prevalence, and therefore requires appropriate public health policies. Multi-disciplinary approaches that make use of eHealth services can build the evidence to influence public policy. The European Union-funded project EVOTION developed a platform that is fed with real-time data from hearing aids, a smartphone, and additional clinical data and makes public health policy recommendations based on hypothetical public health policy-making models, a big data engine and decision support system.

Application of Big Data to Support Evidence-Based Public Health Policy Decision-Making for Hearing.

Ideally, public health policies are formulated from scientific data; however, policy-specific data are often unavailable. Big data can generate ecologically-valid, high-quality scientific evidence, and therefore has the potential to change how public health policies are formulated. Here, we discuss the use of big data for developing evidence-based hearing health policies, using data collected and analyzed with a research prototype of a data repository known as EVOTION (EVidence-based management of hearing impairments: public health pOlicy-making based on fusing big data analytics and simulaTION), to illustrate our points.

Big Data for Sound Policies: Toward Evidence-Informed Hearing Health Policies.

Purpose: The scarcity of health care resources calls for their rational allocation, including within hearing health care. Policies define the course of action to reach specific goals such as optimal hearing health. The process of policy making can be divided into 4 steps: (a) problem identification and issue recognition, (b) policy formulation, (c) policy implementation, and (d) policy evaluation.

Improving competing voices segregation for hearing impaired listeners using a low-latency deep neural network algorithm.

Hearing aid users are challenged in listening situations with noise and especially speech-on-speech situations with two or more competing voices. Specifically, the task of attending to and segregating two competing voices is particularly hard, unlike for normal-hearing listeners, as shown in a small sub-experiment. In the main experiment, the competing voices benefit of a deep neural network (DNN) based stream segregation enhancement algorithm was tested on hearing-impaired listeners.

Clinical validation of a public health policy-making platform for hearing loss (EVOTION): protocol for a big data study.

Introduction: The holistic management of hearing loss (HL) requires an understanding of factors that predict hearing aid (HA) use and benefit beyond the acoustics of listening environments. Although several predictors have been identified, no study has explored the role of audiological, cognitive, behavioural and physiological data nor has any study collected real-time HA data. This study will collect 'big data', including retrospective HA logging data, prospective clinical data and real-time data via smart HAs, a mobile application and biosensors.

Associations Between Hearing Performance and Physiological Measures - An Overview and Outlook.

The current paper summarises the research investigating associations between physiological data and hearing performance. An overview of state-of-the-art research and literature is given as well as promising directions for associations between physiological data and data regarding hearing loss and hearing performance. The physiological parameters included in this paper are: electrodermal activity, heart rate variability, blood pressure, blood oxygenation and respiratory rate.

The effect of tone-vocoding on spatial release from masking for old, hearing-impaired listeners.

Old, hearing-impaired listeners generally benefit little from lateral separation of multiple talkers when listening to one of them. This study aimed to determine how spatial release from masking (SRM) in such listeners is affected when the interaural time differences (ITDs) in the temporal fine structure (TFS) are manipulated by tone-vocoding (TVC) at the ears by a master hearing aid system. Word recall was compared, with and without TVC, when target and masker sentences from a closed set were played simultaneously from the front loudspeaker (co-located) and when the maskers were played 45° to the left and right of the listener (separated).

Electrophysiological and behavioural processing of complex acoustic cues.

Objectives: To examine behavioural and neural processing of pitch cues in adults with normal hearing (NH) and adults with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL).

Methods: All participants completed a test of behavioural sensitivity to pitch cues using the TFS1 test (Moore and Sek, 2009a). Cortical potentials (N1, P2 and acoustic change complex) were recorded in response to frequency shifted (deltaF) tone complexes in an 'ABA' pattern.

Perception of a sung vowel as a function of frequency-modulation rate and excursion in listeners with normal hearing and hearing impairment.

Purpose: Frequency fluctuations in human voices can usually be described as coherent frequency modulation (FM). As listeners with hearing impairment (HI listeners) are typically less sensitive to FM than listeners with normal hearing (NH listeners), this study investigated whether hearing loss affects the perception of a sung vowel based on FM cues.

Method: Vibrato maps were obtained in 14 NH and 12 HI listeners with different degrees of musical experience.