A team at the University of Washington have developed a test sensitive enough to detect hearing loss that relies only on a conventional smartphone, earbuds, and microphone.
confines of the human ear lies a bony structure, curly and shaped like a seashell. This structure, called the cochlea, contains little hairy cells that vibrate when sounds pass through. These slight vibrations emerge as faint sounds—hard to detect, but still traceable—and they are different in healthy ears compared to those with hearing loss.
“Growing up in India, we never had any kind of universal hearing screening,” says Shyamnath Gollakota, a computer scientist at the University of Washington who led the study. “Using these devices, we actually have an opportunity to enable universal hearing screening across the world—it’s pretty exciting.”
And screening in newborns is critical. Without early identification, children can be put at an “enormous developmental disadvantage,” wrote Carolyn Jenks, a pediatric otolaryngologist at Johns Hopkins University, in an email. While testing right after birth is standard in the United States, it is often unavailable in economically developing nations or rural areas with few resources.
The team tested their homebrew setup’s sensitivity and accuracy on 201 people who ranged from one week to 20 years old at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the Center on Human Development and Disability at the University of Washington. The scientists recruited the patients by simply asking those who came for regular appointments—many of whom had hearing loss of different types—if they would be interested in joining the study.
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