DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT OF HEARING AIDS

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this Phase I proposal is to refine and field test a computerized judgment method called Dynamic Assessment of Hearing Aids (DAHA). This method uses an intuitive graphical computer interface to record visual analogue ratings of a patient's satisfaction with various features of his/her hearing aid. The results of each assessment are immediately and effortlessly available to the clinician. Both current and historical results, as well as normative data are easily available for each patient. The program will be available both in English and Spanish. At present, questionnaires are most commonly used, but drawbacks of these methods include laboriousness for both the patient and the person who administers and scores the scale, delayed availability of the results, difficulties in retrieval and comparison with earlier assessments for the same patient, and/or normative data. A successful pilot test of this new method has been conducted with 39 patients in a typical clinical setting, but the psychometric characteristics of the method, such as validity and reliability, have yet to be established. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: The number of audiologists practicing in the US is approximately 7000 (source: American Academy of Audiology), and the number of people in the U.S. with hearing loss sufficient to affect daily living exceeds 25 million. Successful completion of the proposed project will fulfill the existing demand by providing computer assessment of perceived quality of hearing aids that can be used in a variety of areas of clinical practice, clinical research, as well as R&D and marketing for designers and manufacturers of hearing aid devices.