Telehealth-enabled auditory brainstem response testing for infants living in rural communities: the British Columbia Early Hearing Program experience

Applied tele-audiology research in clinical practice during the past decade: a scoping review

“…Five studies were identified that evaluated remote diagnostic testing procedures (Hayes et al 2012;Dharmar et al 2016;Ramkumar, Rajendran, et al 2018;Ramkumar et al 2019;Hatton et al 2019). Three of the studies assessed the feasibility of remote testing to reduce loss to follow-up from newborn hearing screening (Hayes et al 2012;Dharmar et al 2016;Hatton et al 2019). Findings from these remote testing studies provide strong clinical evidence that tele-audiology diagnostic hearing services can be successfully implemented for infant hearing testing.…”

“…In a large-scale study of 102 infants who failed their newborn hearing screening and/or had risk factors for hearing loss, the British Columbia Early Hearing Program (BCEHP) conducted a tele-audiology diagnostic test battery with the help of trained audiometric technicians located at the patient site (Hatton et al 2019). Overall, the authors found that the tele-audiology diagnostic testing substantially reduced costs for British Columbia's EHDI program, averting $91,250 in travel cost for 102 infants.…”

“…Perspectives of providers, adult patients, parents of paediatric patients, and test facilitators related to tele-audiology services were explored in 22 studies. Two studies sought perspectives related to screening (Ciccia et al 2011;van Wyk et al 2019), four related to diagnostics (Hayes et al 2012;Dharmar et al 2016;Ramkumar et al 2016;Hatton et al 2019), six related to cochlear implants (Rodr ıguez et al 2010;Wasowski et al 2012;Hughes et al 2012;Kuzovkov et al 2014;Cullington and Agyemang-Prempeh 2017;Slager et al 2019), four related to hearing aids (Penteado et al 2014;Novak et al 2016;Muñoz et al 2017;Thrum, Driscoll, and Keogh 2018), and three related to rehabilitation (Br€ annstr€ om et al, 2016;Beukes et al 2017;Thrum, Driscoll, and Keogh 2018). Three studies sought perspectives of audiologists broadly related to tele-audiology services (Singh et al 2014;Eikelboom and Swanepoel 2016;Rashid et al 2019).…”

“…Parent satisfaction following tele-audiology ABR diagnostic testing was high (Hayes et al 2012;Dharmar et al 2016;Ramkumar et al 2016;Hatton et al 2019) and the majority of the caregivers thought that they could access service providers sooner with teleaudiology (Hatton et al 2019). Dharmar and colleagues (2016) reported that almost all parents were engaged and comfortable talking about the testing through teleconferencing and providers also reported positive perceptions with the experience.…”

Expanded use of teleservices in otology and neurotology in response to the COVID‐19 (SARS‐Cov‐2) pandemic

“…[11][12][13][14] Likewise, teleaudiology has been used, albeit sporadically, for audiometric evaluations, while hearing aid and cochlear implant remote programming are emerging practices. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Two major obstacles heretofore to the development of teletechnology have been the inability to bill for teleservices, and the need for all platforms-the physician's and the patient's-to be HIPAA compliant. Previously only face-to-face encounters could be reim- For years, before the advent of COVID restrictions, the emerging live-motion technology had been embraced by Deaf and hearing-impaired people.…”