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  - Schlee, Winfried
A1  - Neff, Patrick
A1  - Simoes, Jorge
A1  - Langguth, Berthold
A1  - Schoisswohl, Stefan
A1  - Steinberger, Heidi
A1  - Norman, Marie
A1  - Spiliopoulou, Myra
A1  - Schobel, Johannes
A1  - Hannemann, Ronny
A1  - Pryss, Rüdiger
T1  - Smartphone-guided educational counseling and self-help for chronic tinnitus
JF  - Journal of Clinical Medicine
N2  - Tinnitus is an auditory phantom perception in the ears or head in the absence of a corresponding external stimulus. There is currently no effective treatment available that reliably reduces tinnitus. Educational counseling is a treatment approach that aims to educate patients and inform them about possible coping strategies. For this feasibility study, we implemented educational material and self-help advice in a smartphone app. Participants used the educational smartphone app unsupervised during their daily routine over a period of four months. Comparing the tinnitus outcome measures before and after smartphone-guided treatment, we measured changes in tinnitus-related distress, but not in tinnitus loudness. Improvements on the Tinnitus Severity numeric rating scale reached an effect size of 0.408, while the improvements on the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) were much smaller with an effect size of 0.168. An analysis of user behavior showed that frequent and intensive use of the app is a crucial factor for treatment success: participants that used the app more often and interacted with the app intensively reported a stronger improvement in the tinnitus. Between study allocation and final assessment, 26 of 52 participants dropped out of the study. Reasons for the dropouts and lessons for future studies are discussed in this paper.
KW  - tinnitus
KW  - self-help
KW  - ecological momentary assessment
KW  - ehealth
KW  - smart-phone
KW  - intervention
Y1  - 2022
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-267295
SN  - 2077-0383
VL  - 11
IS  - 7
ER  -