Video-conferencing and telemedicine strategies are used in Tennessee (US) by Vanderbilt University’s Bill Wilkerson Center to reach families of newborn babies who need follow-up tests after failing an initial hearing test at birth.
Vanderbilt’s Audiology, SLT and VTOD Training
Cleverly, the same programme will teach Vanderbilt’s pediatric audiology and speech-pathology students to counsel clients remotely – while training graduate student educators to work with deaf and hard-of-hearing children.
Ultimately, Vanderbilt’s graduates will remote-work in the areas of audiology and speech-pathology, and as itinerant (visiting) teachers who support pupils at mainstream schools, with full knowledge of telepractice ethics.
Eventually, teams of audiologists, SLTs, visiting and school teachers will teleconference to support families with deaf/hoh children, firstly for infant language-intervention and later to support pupils in mainstream-education.
“BabyTalk” From Stanford University and Jean Weingarten
Videoconferencing is used to coach families of newly-implanted infants in every day spoken-language development in virtual “BabyTalk” sessions designed by Stanford University and California’s Jean Weingarten School.
“Getting an implant is the easy part”, says Nikolas Blevins, cochlear implant surgeon – who’s on the BabyTalk team. “The question is, what are you going to do with [the implant] once you’ve got it? Without follow-up education and therapy, it’s not a useful device. The patient will not develop speech.”
Today’s infants will meet tele-therapy during their lives. For some, their entire support services may be delivered virtually, including remote tuning of cochlear implants, which is already done in Australia’s remoter regions.
More Reading
- Family Auditory-Verbal Therapy By Telepractice
- The Sky’s The Limit, When Parents Are Informed
- John Tracy Parent Webinars (January to April 2014)
- Live Video-Chats Suit Toddler Language Learning
- How The HSE Can Use Telepractice To Cut Costs
- The Need To Re-Think Learning For Universality
- How New Zealand’s Hearing Tests Lead To Early Intervention
- Telepractice For Low-Cost Language Teaching
- A TeleAudiology Program With Lessons For Ireland
- Tele-Health, Services, Therapy: It’s All In A Name
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