HearIT - A low cost hearing screening device

Hearing impairment is one of the serious disabilities but is often neglected in India. The individual with hearing loss in the country often suffer due to lower wages and inadequacy of facilities for them. This causes more financial burden and higher unemployment rate. The neonatal hearing screening (NHS) programme is universally recommended and accepted means for early identification and intervention of congenital hearing loss. Initially targeted for babies at high risk, Universal Neonatal Hearing Screening (UNHS) now stands for arrangement of, screening every neonate born in the hospital. The implementation of UNHS has been shown to reduce the age of identification of hearing impairment significantly and minimize the overall effect of hearing loss on an individual’s life. In India, the programme implementation is still in initial phase and monitoring children as well as adults regularly is almost non-prevalent. This can be majorly attributed to currently available expensive hearing screening devices. Further, such equipment may only be used by specialists such as audiologists, who are in shortage. In this project we will completely re-engineer such a screening device in order to significantly bring down its cost, enable it to be used by laypersons in the same manner that we use blood pressure monitors or thermometers and make suitable for use in different surroundings without requiring a no-ambient noise setting. More widespread availability of low-cost screening devices will enable their usage in schools, small healthcare centres, factories and construction sites. This in turn will help with the detection of hearing impairment and the affected individuals may be referred for treatment early on, thereby significantly improving the chances of recovery and prevent further deterioration.