TY  - JOUR
A1  - Allgaier, Johannes
A1  - Schlee, Winfried
A1  - Probst, Thomas
A1  - Pryss, Rüdiger
T1  - Prediction of tinnitus perception based on daily life mHealth data using country origin and season
JF  - Journal of Clinical Medicine
N2  - Tinnitus is an auditory phantom perception without external sound stimuli. This chronic perception can severely affect quality of life. Because tinnitus symptoms are highly heterogeneous, multimodal data analyses are increasingly used to gain new insights. MHealth data sources, with their particular focus on country- and season-specific differences, can provide a promising avenue for new insights. Therefore, we examined data from the TrackYourTinnitus (TYT) mHealth platform to create symptom profiles of TYT users. We used gradient boosting engines to classify momentary tinnitus and regress tinnitus loudness, using country of origin and season as features. At the daily assessment level, tinnitus loudness can be regressed with a mean absolute error rate of 7.9% points. In turn, momentary tinnitus can be classified with an F1 score of 93.79%. Both results indicate differences in the tinnitus of TYT users with respect to season and country of origin. The significance of the features was evaluated using statistical and explainable machine learning methods. It was further shown that tinnitus varies with temperature in certain countries. The results presented show that season and country of origin appear to be valuable features when combined with longitudinal mHealth data at the level of daily assessment.
KW  - tinnitus
KW  - gradient boosting machine
KW  - mobile health
KW  - machine learning
KW  - multimodal data
KW  - explainable machine learning
Y1  - 2022
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-281812
SN  - 2077-0383
VL  - 11
IS  - 15
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Mehdi, Muntazir
A1  - Dode, Albi
A1  - Pryss, Rüdiger
A1  - Schlee, Winfried
A1  - Reichert, Manfred
A1  - Hauck, Franz J.
T1  - Contemporary review of smartphone apps for tinnitus management and treatment
JF  - Brain Sciences
N2  - Tinnitus is a complex and heterogeneous psycho-physiological disorder responsible for causing a phantom ringing or buzzing sound albeit the absence of an external sound source. It has a direct influence on affecting the quality of life of its sufferers. Despite being around for a while, there has not been a cure for tinnitus, and the usual course of action for its treatment involves use of tinnitus retaining and sound therapy, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). One positive aspect about these therapies is that they can be administered face-to-face as well as delivered via internet or smartphone. Smartphones are especially helpful as they are highly personalized devices, and offer a well-established ecosystem of apps, accessible via respective marketplaces of differing mobile platforms. Note that current therapeutic treatments such as CBT have shown to be effective in suppressing the tinnitus symptoms when administered face-to-face, their effectiveness when being delivered using smartphones is not known so far. A quick search on the prominent market places of popular mobile platforms (Android and iOS) yielded roughly 250 smartphone apps offering tinnitus-related therapies and tinnitus management. As this number is expected to steadily increase due to high interest in smartphone app development, a contemporary review of such apps is crucial. In this paper, we aim to review scientific studies validating the smartphone apps, particularly to test their effectiveness in tinnitus management and treatment. We use the PRISMA guidelines for identification of studies on major scientific literature sources and delineate the outcomes of identified studies.
KW  - mobile health
KW  - healthcare
KW  - mobile apps
KW  - tinnitus therapy
KW  - cbt
KW  - self help
KW  - tinnitus research
Y1  - 2020
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-219367
SN  - 2076-3425
VL  - 10
IS  - 11
ER  -