Developing safe tinnitus treatment software

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Tinnitus, which is characterized by a phantom ringing in the ears, significantly affects the quality of life for an estimated 150,000 Canadians. Despite huge amounts spent on tinnitus treatment (over 1.2 billion is spent annually on tinnitus disability claims by US veterans), few effective treatments are available. Sound Options has developed an effective sound therapy treatment that has been scientifically demonstrated to be effective. However, to make their product fully available to patients requires a safe software implementation. To accomplish this, we will apply a systematic software engineering methodology to the development and documentation of Sound Options's software, including the following documents: problem statement, development plan, hazard analysis, requirements specification, verification and validation plan, design specification, testing report and user manual. To further improve maintainability, we will make use of literate programming, where the software is written for human comprehension, as opposed to computer comprehension. To improve the software development infrastructure of Sound Options, we will bring in modern tools, including version control, an automatic testing framework, and issue tracking. The most significant impact of this research will be enabling effective treatment for those suffering from tinnitus. There is also an associated economic benefit for Sound Options, since a by product of developing the software for safety will be a relatively easy approval process with the US Food and Drug Administration. This project increases the applicant's knowledge and experience of the development of certifiable scientific software and medical software, and potentially strengthens his relationship with the FDA. This knowledge and expertise will be disseminated to students, colleagues, and the Canadian software industry, leading to better and safer software.