Audiology telemedicine

Abstract

Various real-time telemedicine applications have been investigated in audiology, including pure tone audiometry, otoacoustic emission testing, auditory brainstem response recordings, hearing aid fitting and video-otoscopy. Store-and-forward applications have usually been used to transmit basic patient data including case history information and hearing screening results, although both video-nystagmography and video-otoscopy have been piloted. Remote access to computerized equipment is relevant to audiology telemedicine, although there have been few reports of the use of application sharing using computerized audiology equipment. In a pilot trial of real-time telemedicine, both pure tone and speech audiometry measures were provided remotely through application sharing. Audiology telemedicine appears promising, but it is at an early stage of development and many areas such as its cost effectiveness, patient acceptance and test efficacy require systematic investigation.