Evaluating the Reliability of 'AudiClick': A Click-Based Mobile App for Hearing Loss.

Introduction: To develop and validate a click-based mobile "Audiclick" app employing click noises for hearing assessments.

Materials and methods: This prospective comparative study compares the "AudiClick" app as a hearing screening tool to pure tone audiometry. Participants listened to sounds through wired earbud headphones that were connected to an Android or iOS device.

Results: The study involved 110 participants aged between 18 to 80 years old. All degrees of hearing loss severity corresponds to pure tone average (p < 0.01) results. The app was also found to be effective at identifying hearing loss (80-99% sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and accuracy). Test-retest reliability had also shown excellent ICC scores of 0.93.

Conclusions: This study demonstrates that a mobile app using click sounds can be as efficient as pure tone audiometry for field screenings, while being more cost-effective and easier to develop.