US Hearing Device Patents for November-December 2017
HHTM welcomes back Dr. Holly Hosford-Dunn to Hearing Economics this week to bring readers the latest update in her popular patent series that has been tracking patent activity in the hearing industry since 2012 The patent series took a 6 month vacation and resumes today with 73 patents which were awarded in the fourth…
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Improving Hearing Aid Market Penetration through Forward Integration
Editor’s Note: Hearing Health & Technology Matters (HHTM) is pleased to post the first column from the new Section Editor of Hearing Economics, Amyn Amlani. If you are a frequent reader of HHTM, it’s likely you have read several guest columns from Amyn, and if you’re an occasional reader who may have missed his previous…
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Relationship between OTC Price and Behavioral Performance: A Guiding Light
by Amyn Amlani, PhD The reality of over-the-counter (OTC) products becoming federally regulated took one step closer to certainty last week. The FDA Reauthorization Act of 2017 (HR 2430), which includes provisions for OTC hearing aids for adults with perceived mild-to-moderate hearing loss, passed successfully through the US House of Representatives in July 2017…
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US Hearing Device Patents for February 2017
“Not your father’s Oldsmobile” was a 1980s ad campaign to shake the geriatric stigma attached to such cars by featuring an “Aerotech” futuristic model (Fig 1). Likewise, “Not your grandfather’s hearing aid” is a recurring theme in our industry as technology moves to reduce stigma and introduce integrated, futuristic audio processing systems (feature image above)…
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Dominance in a Patent Class
Charting patent trends can track technological innovation and stagnation by proxy variables such as geography (countries, metropolitan areas), industry concentration, education (proximity of universities, proportion of PhDs), income per capita, etc. One measure is growth and dominance of patent classes by an industry or company. Of interest to the hearing aid industry is its representation…
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