Telemedicine in Otology

The process of diagnosis, rehabilitation and post-intervention care over patients with hearing disabilities, often equipped with different kinds of hearing prostheses, usually requires an experienced, multidisciplinary team to undertake repeated sessions with the patient in the clinic. For the majority of patients it entails long travels from their home, associated with costs, time, and travel weariness. To reduce patients’ burdens and allow specialist from the field to benefit from the experience of the World Hearing Center’s team, the National Network of Teleaudiology (NNT) was established.
The aim of this report is to show what was done till now to develop National Network of Teleaudiology, to present what are we doing now and how are the plans for the future. Further development of the Network is planned. It is enriched with new diagnostic and research methods and its scope is still extended.
The NNT has proved to be a reliable platform for telefitting, telediagnosis, teleconsultations and telerehabilitations - improving quality of service for the patients and providing substantial time and money savings. With proper models of care telemedicine can be a method to cope with growing number of patients in the future, but still allowing for the need of expert’s knowledge.