Connected Hearing Devices and Audiologists: The User-Centered Development of Digital Service Innovations.

Today, medical technology manufacturers enter the service market through the development of digital service innovations. In the field of audiology, these developments increasingly shift the service capacities from audiologists to manufacturers and technical systems. However, the technology-driven developments of manufacturers lack acceptance of hearing device users and undermine the important role of audiologists within the service provision. By following a user-centered design approach in order to deal with the technological and social challenges of disruptive services, we aim to develop service innovations on an integrated service platform in the field of tele-audiology. To ensure the acceptance of technology-driven service innovations among hearing device users and audiologists, we systematically integrated these actors in a participatory innovation process. With qualitative and quantitative data we identified several requirements and preferences for different service innovations in the field of tele-audiology. According to the preferences of the different actors, we proposed a service platform approach based on a connected hearing device in three pillars of application: 1) one-to-one (1:1) service innovations based on a remote fitting concept directly improve the availability of services offered by audiologists without being physically present. Based on this, 2) one-to-many (1:N) service innovations allow the use of the connected hearing device as an indirect data source for training a machine learning algorithm that empowers users through the automation of service processes. A centralized server system collects the data and performs the training of this algorithm. The optimized algorithm is provided to the connected hearing devices to perform automatic acoustic scene classification. This in turn allows optimization of the hearing devices within each acoustic scene. After the user-centered development of the different service innovations which are designed to converge on an integrated service platform, we experimentally evaluated the functionality and applicability of the system as well as the associated role models between the technical system, the hearing device users and audiologists. As a future outlook, we show potentials to use the connected hearing device for 3) cross-industry (N:M) service innovations in contexts outside the healthcare domain and give practical implications for the market launch of successful service innovations in the field of tele-audiology.

Analysis of data from the International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids (IOI-HA) using Bayesian Item Response Theory.

OBJECTIVE: IOI-HA response data are conventionally analysed assuming that the ordinal responses have interval-scale properties. This study critically considers this assumption and compares the conventional approach with a method using Item Response Theory (IRT). DESIGN: A Bayesian IRT analysis model was implemented and applied to several IOI-HA data sets. STUDY SAMPLE: Anonymised IOI-HA responses from 13273 adult users of one or two hearing aids in 11 data sets using the Australian English, Dutch, German and Swedish versions of the IOI-HA. RESULTS: The raw ordinal responses to IOI-HA items do not represent values on interval scales. Using the conventional rating sum as an overall score introduces a scale error corresponding to about 10 - 15% of the true standard deviation in the population. Some interesting and statistically credible differences were demonstrated among the included data sets. CONCLUSIONS: It is questionable to apply conventional statistical measures like mean, variance, t-tests, etc., on the raw IOI-HA ratings. It is recommended to apply only nonparametric statistical test methods for comparisons of IOI-HA results between groups. The scale error can sometimes cause incorrect conclusions when individual results are compared. The IRT approach is recommended for analysis of individual results.

Comparison of psychometric properties of the International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids (IOI-hA) in various studies.

The German translation of the International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids (IOI-HA) was used in a variety of studies including a retrospective mailing campaign and three field tests on recently launched hearing aids. The psychometric properties were compared with each other and with results of previous studies in the U.S.A, Wales, and the Netherlands. Like the English and the Dutch version, the German IOI-HA showed high internal consistency, and factor analyses as well as inter-item correlations indicated the existence of a two-dimensional scale. Furthermore, the IOI turned out to be a valid instrument for distinguishing satisfied and non-satisfied customers during the trial period of a hearing aid.