Introduction: The success of a newborn hearing screening program depends on successful tracking and follow-up to ensure that children who have had positive screening results in the first few days of life receive appropriate and timely diagnostic and intervention services. The easy availability, through a suitable infrastructure, of the data necessary for the tracking, diagnosis, and care of children concerned is a major key to enhancing the quality and efficiency of newborn hearing screening programs.
Materials and methods: Two systems for the automated two-way transmission of newborn hearing screening and configuration data, based on mobile communication technology, for the screening devices MADSEN AccuScreen® and Natus Echo-Screen® were developed and tested in a field study. Radio modem connections were compared with conventional analogue modem transmissions from Natus Echo-Screen devices for duration, transmission rate, number of lost connections, and frequency of use.
Results: The average session duration was significantly lower with the MADSEN AccuScreen (12 s) and Natus Echo-Screen both with radio modem (15 s) than the Natus Echo-Screen with analogue modem (108 s). The transmission rate was significantly higher (898 and 1,758 vs. 181 bytes/s) for the devices with radio modems. Both radio modem devices had significantly lower rates of broken connections after initial connection (2.1 and 0.9 vs. 5.5%). An increase in the frequency of data transmission from the clinics with mobile radio devices was found.
Conclusions: The use of mobile communication technology in newborn hearing screening devices offers improvements in the average session duration, transmission rate, and reliability of the connection over analogue solutions. We observed a behavioral change in clinical staff using the new technology: the data exchange with the tracking center is more often used. The requirements for on-site support were reduced. These savings outweigh the small increase in costs for the Internet service provider.
Keywords: information management; neonatal hearing screening; radio modem; telemedicine.