Vidya Ramkumar, Ph.D, is a Professor and DBT/ Wellcome Trust fellow in Clinical and Public Health, at the Faculty of Audiology and Speech, Language Pathology at Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (DU), Chennai.
She has spent the last decade working on developing service delivery models using e-and mhealth tools to bridge gaps in hearing health care services in the underserved regions.
She established the SRESHT lab in 2020 (see SRESHT Lab) to pursue implementation research in tele-practice applications for early identification and rehabilitation of childhood communication disorders. She works in collaboration with the Government towards implementation of these services.
She is also involved in development of low-cost indigenous assistive and testing devices that can support early identification and rehabilitation of children with developmental and hearing disabilities.
She conducts training programs routinely for nurses and grass root workers towards early identification of hearing loss and developmental disabilities and also assesses public-funded programs for outcomes in her state.
She is a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Professional Research fellow (2014) and has had several major and minor funded projects including, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), DBT/Wellcome Trust, and CSR grants.
She has published several papers in international journals in her area of expertise.
1.Implementation research in childhood hearing and communication disorders
2.Early detection and intervention of childhood hearing and communication disorders
3.Community-based Participatory Research
4.M-health/E-health/ Tele-practice
5.Affordable Assistive technology
Project 2: Description Hearing impairment is considered as a silent disability across the world. Unaddressed hearing loss impacts communication and speech, cognition, social isolation, society, economy, education and employment. Therefore, Hearing screening for newborns has become a common practice in many high-income countries. In Low- and middle-income country like India, stake holders are making possible efforts to set up a newborn hearing screening program. Mobile health solutions have been explored in hearing health care services to reduce device costs, decentralize health care, and address the device related gaps that exist in early identification of childhood hearing loss. Recently we developed (funded by DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance), SRESHT – a low cost mHealth based hearing screening device to screen for disabling hearing losses (>40% of hearing loss) in children below 6 years of age in rural districts of Tamil nadu. Our proposed project through the current grant aims to scale up the SRESHT device to various states of India by developing and validating hearing screening module using ‘Speech/ speech spectrum based stimuli’ in noise in several Indian languages (Telugu, Hindi, Kannada). These modules will have language independent stimuli for children below 3 years of age and language dependent modules for children between 3 and 6 years of age. This project also aims to screen lower degrees of hearing loss (mild degree) in children using SRESHT device’s newly developed hearing screening module. We believe this will support implementation of community level early identification of childhood hearing screening thorugh both public sector and NGOs in India.
Project 1: Description ABOUT This project aims to develop, implement and evaluate the feasibility of a new intervention using a comprehensive tele practice model of screening, diagnosis and rehabilitation of children below 6 years with hearing and speech-language disorders using ICT. Designs and Method: Currently, we are conducting situational analysis in two districts (Perambalur and Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu) using qualitative methods to understand needs and challenges amongst caregivers of children with disability, public sector professionals, administrators grass root workers, NGO staff in accessing or providing services. The situational analysis will also inform the readiness for the intervention using tele-practice, among the various stakeholders in the community. Parallel to this, we are developing and validating a mobile/tablet-based hearing and speech-language screening device. Later, the intervention (comprehensive tele-practice model*) will be implemented in Perambalur district. The outcomes will be evaluated using mixed methods feasibility study, with comparison to standard practice district (Ariyalur). Conclusion: At the end of this project, we expect to have a feasible, effective and a comprehensive tele practice model that will enable early identification and rehabilitation of young children with speech language and hearing disorders. Impact: Since COVID 19, tele-practice has gained momentum in India. Tele-practice guidelines are framed for various health care disciplines including for Speech, language and hearing sciences. In this context, the results of this study will help to translate a feasible tele-practice based intervention for early identification and rehabilitation of children with hearing and speech language disorders in other districts of Tamil Nadu.
1.Member-Rehabilitation Council of India. 2.Life Member-Indian Speech and Hearing Association 3.Telemedicine Society of India 5. Audiology core committee member-International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP), 6. Member India Laison- International Society of Audiology (ISA)