Evaluating the Impact of Hearing Conditioning App on Clinician Task Load and Hearing Test Efficiency in Children

BACKGROUND: Clinicians recommend that parents use noise-making toys for hearing conditioning, but these differ from formal testing stimuli, resulting in longer test times and more sessions to complete the hearing evaluation. The app-based (AB) conditioning method, having similar stimuli used in actual hearing evaluation with structured parental guidance, could reduce the clinician's task load and the number of sessions needed for pure tone audiometry (PTA) testing among children compared to the conventional conditioning method. METHODS: A comparative research design assessed the effectiveness of 2 conditioning methods for hearing in 30 participants aged 2 to 3.6 years, randomly assigned to conventional (n=15) or AB methods (n=15). The clinician was blinded to the method used. The clinician's workload during PTA testing was evaluated using the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) task load tool, and the number of sessions needed to complete PTA testing was recorded for each method. RESULTS: Children conditioned using the AB method required significantly less clinician task load and fewer PTA testing sessions than the conventional method (CM). Additionally, clinician task load decreased after conditioning, regardless of the method, with no correlation between task load before and after. CONCLUSION: App-based conditioning creates a strong stimulus-response link in children and reduces clinician task load compared to the CM.