Gamification approach to out-of-clinic hearing diagnostics

We are facing an expected increase in the number of people affected by hearing disorders and an ongoing ambition for improved efficiency, e.g. through expeditious or fewer clinical visits. Recent research suggest that classifying patients according to archetypal profile based on additional supra-threshold diagnostic measures allow a consistent treatment approach targeting the needs and preferences of the specific archetypal profile. The potential benefits of such detailed individual patient profiles are likely to necessitate more diagnostic test time for proper classification. Out-of-clinic diagnostic hearing testing proposes a tempting remedy for the above challenges. However, the lack of in-person guidance during testing may lead to unnecessary confusion or frustration and result in poor reliability proving detrimental to the goal. To counteract such insufficiencies the current study proposes a gamification approach to out-of-clinic hearing diagnostics. The gamification approach focusses on simple, effective instructions and seek to provide intuitive interaction with the diagnostic tests. As an example of this approach, tablet-based implementations of a 3I-3AFC version of Spectro-Temporal Modulation with immediate trial feedback, as well as other supra-threshold measurement methods are demonstrated. Acceptance scores for a sample of the intended patient group are reported using the System Usability Scale. Finally, results are compared to the performance without gamification of a similar patient group.