BackgroundHearing ability is important for children to develop speech and language skills as they grow. After a mandatory newborn hearing screening, group or mass screening of children at later ages, such as at preschool age, is often practiced. For this practice to be effective and accessible in low-resource countries such as Thailand, innovative enabling tools that make use of pervasive mobile and smartphone technology should be considered.ObjectiveThis study aims to develop a cost-effective, tablet-based hearing screening system that can perform a rapid minimal speech recognition level test.MethodsAn Android-based screening app was developed. The screening protocol involved asking children to choose pictures corresponding to a set of predefined words heard at various sound levels offered in a specifically designed sequence. For the app, the set of words was validated, and their corresponding speech power levels were calibrated. We recruited 122 children, aged 4-5 years, during the development phase. Another 63 children of the same age were screened for their hearing abilities using the app in version 2. The results in terms of the sensitivity and specificity were compared with those measured using the conventional audiometric equipment.ResultsFor screening purposes, the sensitivity of the developed screening system version 2 was 76.67% (95% CI 59.07-88.21), and the specificity was 95.83% (95% CI 89.77-98.37) for screening children with mild hearing loss (pure-tone average threshold at 1, 2, and 4 kHz, >20 dB). The time taken for the screening of each child was 150.52 (SD 19.07) seconds (95% CI 145.71-155.32 seconds). The average time used for conventional play audiometry was 11.79 (SD 3.66) minutes (95% CI 10.85-12.71 minutes).ConclusionsThis study shows the potential use of a tablet-based system for rapid and mobile hearing screening. The system was shown to have good overall sensitivity and specificity. Overall, the idea can be easily adopted for systems based on other languages.

This paper reviews the development process and discusses the key findings which resulted from our multidisciplinary research team's effort to develop an alternative digital hearing suitable for low-resource countries such as Thailand. A cost-effective, fully programmable digital hearing aid, with its specifications benchmarking against WHO's recommendations, was systematically designed, engineered, and tested. Clinically it had undergone a full clinical trial that employed the outcome measurement protocol adopted from the APHAB, the first time implemented in Thai language. Results indicated that using the hearing aid improves user's satisfaction in terms of ease of communication, background noises, and reverberation, with clear benefit after 3 and 6 months, confirming its efficacy. In terms of engineering, the hearing aid also proved to be robust, passing all the designated tests. As the technology has successfully been transferred to a local company for the production phase, we also discuss other challenges that may arise before the device can be introduced into the market.

This paper describes the design, development, and tests of a low cost ALS. It was designed for hearing-impaired student classrooms. It utilised digital wireless technology and was aimed to be an alternative to a popular FM ALS. Key specifications include transmitting in 2.4 GHz ISM band with eight selectable transmission channels, battery operated and chargeable, pocket size, and ranged up to thirty metres. Audio characteristics and user tests show that it is comparable to a commercial system, currently employed in our partner school. The results also show that wearing an ALS clearly improves hearing of hearing-impaired students. Long-term usage by school children will be monitored to evaluate the system robustness and durability.

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Background: Hearing ability is important for children to develop speech and language skills as they grow. After a mandatory newborn hearing screening, group or mass screening of children at later age such as preschoolers are usually practiced. In order for this to be effective and accessible in low-resource countries such as Thailand, novel and innovative enabling tools that make use of pervasive mobile and smartphone technology should be considered. Objective: To develop a cost effective, tablet-based hearing screening system that can perform a rapid minimal speech recognition level test. Methods: An android-based screening application was developed. The screening protocol involved asking the child to pick pictures corresponding to the set of predefined words heard at different sound levels offered in a specifically designed sequence. For the application, the set of words were validated, with their corresponding speech power levels calibrated. 63 Children were screened for their hearing abilities using the application. Results in terms of sensitivity and specificity are compared to those measured using conventional audiometric equipment. Results: For screening purposes, the developed screening system was 100% sensitive (95% CI = 83.18% to 100%) for children with speech reception threshold (SRT) or pure tone average threshold > 25 dBHL, with a specificity 0f 79.44% (95% CI = 70.83% to

Background Hearing aids are important assistive devices for hearing rehabilitation. However, the cost of commonly available commercial hearing aids is often higher than the average monthly income of individuals in some developing countries. Therefore, there is a great need to locally produce cheaper, but still effective, hearing aids. The Thai-produced P02 hearing aid was designed to meet this requirement. Objective To compare the effectiveness of the P02 hearing aid with two common commercially available digital hearing aids (Clip-II™ and Concerto Basic®). Methods A prospective, randomized controlled trial with a cross-over design was conducted from October 2012 to September 2014 in a rural Thai community. There were 73 participants (mean age of 73.7 ± 7.3 years) included in this study with moderate to severe hearing loss who were assessed for hearing aid performance, including probe microphone real-ear measurement, functional gain, speech discrimination, and participant satisfaction with the overall quality of perceived sound and the design of the device. Results There were no statistically significant differences in functional gain or speech discrimination among the three hearing aids evaluated (p-value > 0.05). Real-ear measurements of the three hearing aids met the target curve in 93% of the participants. The best real-ear measurement of the hearing aid following the target curve was significantly lower than that of Clip-II™ and Concerto Basic® (p-value < 0.05) at high frequency. However, participants rated the overall quality of sound higher for the P02 hearing aid than that of Clip-II™ but lower than that of Concerto Basic® (p-value > 0.05). Participants revealed that the P02 hearing aid provided the highest satisfaction ratings for design and user-friendliness with statistical significance (p-value < 0.05). Conclusion The P02 hearing aid was an effective device for older Thai adults with hearing disabilities. Additionally, its modern design, simplicity of use, and ease of maintenance were attractive to this group of individuals. These benefits support the rehabilitation potential of this hearing aid model and its positive impact on the quality of life of older adults in developing countries. Trial registration This study was registered under Clinicaltrial.govNCT01902914. Date of registration: July 18, 2013.

Different types of media such as hard disk, flash drive and memory card require different memory formats. File Allocation Table (FAT) file system is ideal for use with devices that are optimized for removable media. FAT16 is a common file system for Windows family of operating systems in hard disk and also in removable media. When transferring data from hard disk to other types of media, the memory format of hard disk must be preserved. Even though the typical memory card size of RFID handheld reader is small (1GB or less), it must preserve the file system format of the hard disk and thus reduces the storage capacity. Based on the understanding of how data are recorded with FAT16, some space in memory reserved for other operating system (OS) different from Windows. This space is considered as a lost space. This paper aims how to use recovery that memory space in FAT16 to record data in removable media of RFID handheld reader.