WARRENVILLE, IL – Phonak announced this week that it has partnered with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to make remote hearing care, including hearing aid fine-tuning and adjustments, a reality for Veterans amid the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
With Phonak Remote Support, VA audiologists can now extend care beyond the walls of their clinics to patients who are social distancing, have mobility challenges, or to those who prefer virtual follow-up sessions. The technology comes only five weeks after the VA released its COVID-19 Response Plan, which highlighted telehealth services as a preferred health care delivery system for Veterans without COVID-19.
Phonak Remote Support: How it Works
VA audiologists can initiate a Remote Support session through a tab in Phonak’s professional fitting software. At appointment time, patients use the free myPhonak app on their smartphone to virtually connect with their audiologist via secure voice, text or video chat. Because the patient’s phone is linked to his/her hearing aids via Bluetooth® technology, the audiologist gains direct access to all hearing aid settings via the smartphone. This allows Veterans to receive on-the-spot tuning, program changes, counseling, and more in real-time while remaining safely at home.
“Phonak is proud to partner with the Department of Veterans Affairs to make remote hearing aid adjustments and live patient counseling possible for our nation’s heroes. This is important because success with hearing aids has been linked to emotional, cognitive and even physical well-being. While telehealth services like Remote Support are critical during the coronavirus pandemic, they also support several ongoing VA Strategic Goals & Objectives, including the delivery of health care that enhances Veteran well-being and independence.”
–Johanna Bailey-Stark, Au.D., Sr. Director of Government Services for Phonak
Click here to learn more about how Phonak supports U.S. Veterans, including Phonak Remote Support technology, hearing aids on VA contract, or other government services.
*Bluetooth® word mark is a registered trademark owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use of such mark by Sonova AG is under license.
Source: Phonak
