[Transregional tracking in newborn hearing screening].

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE:When patients in the universal newborn hearing screening program move from one geographical area to another between initial screening and medical follow-up, the responsibility for their tracking also moves from one screening center to another. As a result, these patients are lost to follow-up according to the center which had initial responsibility. In cooperation with the Association of German Hearing Screening Centers ("Verband Deutscher Hörscreening-Zentralen e. V.," VDHZ) as an offer to the developers of tracking software, a concept for nationwide tracking including a reference implementation and evaluation is described. METHODS:On the basis of error analysis of real screening data, techniques for preprocessing data, the technical background of the interface, and details regarding integration of the interface into tracking software are presented. Data from a stress test are shown. RESULTS:In a simulation stress test with six hearing screening centers and 54,551 children, all requests were answered within an average response time of 637 ms (standard deviation, SD = 266 ms; median 613 ms). Anonymized surnames (n = 675/1.24%) and duplicate entries in the database (n = 49/0.01%) were detected. CONCLUSION:A transregional tracking procedure using heterogeneous tracking software is possible without the use of a standardized screening ID. The presented approach seems conceptually and technically suitable.