GoAudio mobile audiology test (Koleilat et al., 2020)

Purpose: Hearing loss is a common impairment of the human senses with an estimated 48 million American adults reporting some trouble hearing; however, access to hearing health care is limited. Detection of hearing loss through a mobile, handheld tool can provide an important access point and potentially expedited access to the continuum of hearing health care. Here, we determined that GoAudio, a portable, automated hearing assessment tool, can be used to identify individuals who require additional hearing evaluation in a clinical workflow.

Method: This initial study included 24 adults, ages 18–65 years (M = 50, SD = 12), tested with GoAudio versus “gold-standard” clinical audiometry for eight frequencies to evaluate “real-world” applications. Participants utilized noise-canceling headphones combined with a tablet-based application for the GoAudio assessment.

Results: The primary study outcome measurements were the comparison of hearing thresholds (dB HL) from clinical audiometry and GoAudio. Results suggest that GoAudio is comparable to clinical audiometry for the identification of hearing loss at most frequencies (except 1 kHz for both ears and 2 kHz in the right ear). Upon stratifying data based on age, we identified that GoAudio is capable of identifying suspected age-related hearing loss or hearing thresholds greater than 30 dB HL at higher frequencies in both ears.

Conclusion: The study results support that GoAudio can be used effectively in clinical practice workflows as a reliable hearing assessment tool for the identification of hearing loss at the majority of frequencies outside a sound-treated booth and can detect characteristics of age-related hearing loss.

Supplemental Material S1. Hearing thresholds obtained from GoAudio and Clinical Audiometry for the right ear only. Each individual plot represents hearing thresholds obtained from either GoAudio (dotted line) or the gold standard clinical audiometric assessment (solid line) for each individual that was included in this study (n = 24) for the right ear. The frequencies (kHz) tested are labeled on the x-axis. This figure demonstrates the variability in the hearing abilities of the individuals included in this study.

Supplemental Material S2. Ratio of individual subjects’ GoAudio (GA) hearing threshold plotted against the clinical audiometry (CA) hearing threshold for the left ear. Each data point represents one individual subject for the left ear only (comparable responses for the right ear were observed). The dashed black line represents the best fit line for the hearing thresholds collected from the study subjects using GoAudio and clinical audiometry and the dashed grey line represents a linear 1:1 relationship.

Koleilat, A., Argue, D. P., Schimmenti, L. A., Ekker, S. C., & Poling, G. L. (2020). The GoAudio quantitative mobile audiology test enhances access to clinical hearing assessments. American Journal of Audiology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_AJA-20-00060