Abstract
This chapter provides a picture of the evolution of mobile applications (apps) for hearing health care (HHC) in terms of availability, variety, penetration, offered services, and target users. Special emphasis is given to newly developed methods that might assist audiologists and hearing professionals to get meaningful information and guidance for informed adoption of apps for themselves as well as for patients and their families. The chapter also shows how these novel methods can be used to characterize and compare a variety of apps across a wide range of services and target user groups. A representative sample of apps, assessed by using such a standardized framework, is analyzed to derive a multifaceted picture of apps for HHC. The chapter outlines and discusses emerging trends and needs in the area and highlights the open challenges as well as potential opportunities for professionals, researchers, developers, and stakeholders at large.
TopIntroduction
In the growing area of digitally enabled audiology, the emerging mHealth (mobile Health) branch is extremely promising and opens novel opportunities for professionals and hearing health care (HHC) providers. In the past years we have witnessed a rapid growth of the number and variety of mHealth solutions in HHC. Especially, mobile applications (apps) are rising growing interest. The debate about the potential benefits of these novel solutions, the existing gaps and challenges, as well as the emerging opportunities is open and lively (Bright and Pallawela, 2016; Paglialonga, Pinciroli, and Tognola, 2017a; Paglialonga, Tognola, and Pinciroli, 2015a; Paglialonga, Tognola, and Pinciroli, 2015b; Tognola, Paglialonga, Chiaramello, and Pinciroli, 2015; Wong and Fung, 2015).
This Chapter describes the recent evolution of apps for HHC and assesses the current scenario in terms of availability, variety, penetration, offered services, and target user groups. The Chapter also shows how newly developed methods for app characterization and assessment can support audiologists and hearing professionals. These methods can enable them to get meaningful knowledge about apps, understand their peculiar features, and, in turn, help their patients to get increased benefit from informed, effective use of these solutions. Specifically, the Chapter describes a recently developed method that is able to characterize apps for HHC, regardless the operating system and hardware platform, by using a core set of features: the ALFA4Hearing model (Paglialonga et al., 2017a; Paglialonga et al., 2015a). Then, the Chapter describes the multifaceted picture obtained by using the ALFA4Hearing model on a representative sample of apps. Finally, the Chapter discusses the main emerging trends and needs in this area and highlight the open challenges as well as some potential opportunities for professionals, researchers, developers, and stakeholders at large.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Assessment: The evaluation of quality components.
EHealth: The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for health.
MHealth: The branch of eHealth that makes use of mobile devices.
Characterization: The identification of relevant characteristic features.
Service Area: Each of the four categories in which the app functions can be classified (education and information, screening and assessment, intervention and rehabilitation, and assistive tools).
ALFA4 Hearing Model: A descriptive method to characterize apps for hearing healthcare.
APP: An application software designed to run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.