EarGenie: Assessment of a Minimum Viable Product

February 4, 2025 updated by: Colette McKay, The Bionics Institute of Australia

The goal of this clinical trial is to evaluate safety and preliminary efficacy of a novel device (EarGenie MVP) to assess hearing function in infants, using a small number of infants with normal hearing. The main questions it aims to answer are:

  • Is our device safe?
  • Does the device provide preliminary results consistent with previous results from a commercial functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) research device?

Participants will attend one test session and have their hearing assessed with the EarGenie MVP device.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

This is a first-in-human study to evaluate safety and preliminary efficacy of our prototype hearing assessment system (EarGenie MVP). EarGenie MVP uses fNIRS technology to assess an infant's brain response to hearing speech sounds, or discriminating between different speech sounds. It includes software to automatically run analysis in real time, and has a user interface allowing clinicians to operate the tests and receive result reports. The test methods and analysis software have been developed using our commercial fNIRS research system, but the EarGenie MVP has been designed for easy use in paediatric audiology clinics.

10 infants with normal hearing will be recruited for the study, and undergo one test session each with the EarGenie MVP. Safety data will be documented and the results of the tests examined to see if they are consistent with the results expected from our experience using the commercial device in 36 infants with normal hearing.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

11

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Australia
    • Victoria
      • East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3002
        • Bionics Institute

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Child

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Is between the ages of 1 and 24 months at the time of fNIRS testing.
  • Has no known hearing loss
  • Has a legally acceptable representative capable of understanding the informed consent document and providing consent on the participant's behalf.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • There are no exclusion criteria other than not meeting the inclusion criteria.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Device Feasibility
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: fNIRS
Infants who have a test completed with EarGenie MVP in a single test session
Device: EarGenie MVP test
The EarGenie test consists of placing the EarGenie headgear on the infant and running the fNIRS tests via the user interface. Blocks of speech sounds are presented to the infant via earphones or via speaker, and the EarGenie MVP measures changes in the blood oxygenation. Automatic analyses are run to determine whether the infant heard the sounds or discriminated between them. The infant will be in a natural sleep when the fNIRS test is run. Prior to the test, standard audiometric procedures (otoscopy and tympanometry) will confirm normal middle ear function.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Prevalence of Significant fNIRS Detection and Discrimination Responses
Time Frame: Each infant has one test session, lasting up to to hours. Outcome measures are determined after the last infant has been tested.

Evidence of device feasibility will be obtained by comparing the test results obtained using EarGenie MVP to our existing test results for a larger number of infants obtained with a commercial device NIRx (McKay et al. 2023. "A Reliable, Accurate, and Clinic-friendly Objective Test of Speech Sound Detection and Discrimination in Sleeping Infants." PsyArXiv. June 20. doi:10.31234/osf.io/fbwcm).

For each infant, the presence of a significant response is determined by the incorporated automatic analysis software, and further visually supported for the tester by checking that the shape of the response waveform is consistent with those found in the previous data set. We will consider the feasibility as confirmed if not more than 1(/10) infants (or 10%) have an absent detection response at 65 dB SPL, and not more than 3 (/10) babies (or 30%) show an absent discrimination response for "Ba" versus "Ga".
Each infant has one test session, lasting up to to hours. Outcome measures are determined after the last infant has been tested.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Incidence of Treatment-Emergent Adverse Events [Safety and Tolerability]
Time Frame: Adverse effects are noted during, and for 24 hours following the single test session of the infant. Incidence of events is calculated after the last infant is tested.

Safety assessment will be undertaken as follows. Any adverse event (as defined using standard definitions) will be documented in each infant's case report, and reported using standard required procedures. Each infant's case report will also include details of any minor non-reportable occurrences only relevant to comfort of use such as discomfort signs in the infant, or any temporary visual skin marks left by the headgear after the test.

If any major adverse effect occurs, the trial will be stopped until the such time as the issue is resolved.
Adverse effects are noted during, and for 24 hours following the single test session of the infant. Incidence of events is calculated after the last infant is tested.

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

The Bionics Institute of Australia

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Colette M McKay, PhD, The Bionics Institute of Australia

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

August 14, 2023

Primary Completion (Actual)

February 26, 2024

Study Completion (Actual)

February 26, 2024

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

July 10, 2023

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

July 18, 2023

First Posted (Actual)

July 27, 2023

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

March 25, 2025

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 4, 2025

Last Verified

February 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 98058

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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