Abstract
Tinnitus is an annoying ringing in the ears, in varying shades and intensities. Tinnitus can affect a patient’s overall health and social well-being (e.g., sleep problems, trouble concentrating, anxiety, depression and inability to work). Usually, the diagnostic procedure of tinnitus passes through three steps, i.e., audiological examination, psychoacoustic measurement, and disability evaluation. All steps are performed by physicians, by using dedicated hardware/software and administering questionnaires. The paper reports on the results of a one-year running project whose aim is to directly support patients in such a diagnostic procedure, and in particular on an Android app that controls an ad-hoc developed device and automate both the execution of the audiometric examinations and the administration of the questionnaires that measure the disability induced by the tinnitus.
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Notes
- 1.
Such a step is present in the Hughson-Westlake process so to ensure that the intensity level reported by a patient was actual and that the patient was not “cheating” to the physician. In our case, since the app is autonomously used by a patient, this step was considered unnecessary.
- 2.
The font size may be too narrow for some users (especially elderly) if not scalable.
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Pablo, C., Fernando, D.L.P., Alberto, E., Angelo, T., Pierpaolo, V. (2017). An App Supporting the Self-management of Tinnitus. In: Fdez-Riverola, F., Mohamad, M., Rocha, M., De Paz, J., Pinto, T. (eds) 11th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics. PACBB 2017. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 616. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60816-7_11
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