Population Health
April 19, 2023
Improving accessibility of newborn screening with low-cost earbuds
Screening newborns for hearing loss is a vital step in assessing their health. Despite the importance of this test, it is often not available to children in low-income countries due to its high cost.
To address this accessibility issue, University of Washington researchers have created a new hearing screening system that instead uses a smartphone and low-cost earbuds. They tested this device on 114 patients, including babies, as well as on pediatric patients with known hearing loss.
The results of this device found that it performed just as well as more expensive commercial devices, even in patients with previously diagnosed hearing loss.