Development of mobile audiometric test system using mobile phones

As hearing loss progresses gradually, people are not aware of the deterioration progress and get used to living with hearing difficulties, and delay wearing hearing aids. When starting to use hearing aids the adaptation of sound is necessary, since sound quality perceived at the current time differs from that of the former. Adaptation is highly effective at an early stage of slight hearing loss and accordingly the detection of hearing problems at an earlier stage is important. For these reasons, audiometers are necessary which can easily screen persons with hearing loss progressing at an early stage. In this paper, an audiometric test system for screening purposes named MobileAudiometer was developed using the ringing tones, Java program of the mobile phone, and the server computer on the Internet. The present possibility of MobileAudiomcter as a regulated audiometer was examined by verifying the function and the performance in terms of IEC standard. The results showed that there was the practicable possibility of mobile phones being applied to a simple audiometry for screening use.