Hearing Economics

by Harvey Abrams, PhD As if the Costco effect and OTC legislation weren’t causing the audiology community enough tsuris, along comes another threat that’s sure to keep us up at night – deregulating the practice of audiology. In the past 18 months, representatives in 2 states, Iowa and Texas, introduced legislation that would eliminate the requirement to obtain a license

As long as people have been wearing hearing aids, and as long as audiologists have been fitting and tailoring them to individual users, there has always been one intractable problem. That is that hearing aids are standalone devices with (relatively) high IQs and (lamentably) low EQs.   What is the Intelligence of Smart Hearing Devices?   Hearing aids work great

The Internet of Things and Us   Apple’s image of the IoT (feature image, from USPTA #10067734) is a pyramid with AirPods on top. In this patent, Hearables alert the IoT universe when they’re in the ears, ready to receive and send with phone, watch, computer, etc; likewise, the alert when they leave the ears. Hearables are top of the

By Barry Freeman, PhD, and Ian Windmill, PhD The past few decades have been dominated by efforts to control healthcare costs while improving affordability and access to quality care. Hearing care is no exception as demonstrated by the reports of the 2016 NASEM Committee on Accessible and Affordable Hearing Health Care for Adults and the 2016 Report from the President’s

Baumol described a chronic economic disease of healthcare and other direct services due to service wages that must rise on the back of stalled productivity while manufacturing labor costs rise naturally on the back of increasing productivity. The result is increasingly expensive (some would say inefficient) services to administer increasingly efficient devices. For dispensing audiologists, Baumol’s cost disease puts us loggerheads

by Vinaya Manchaiah, PhD, and Amyn M Amlani, PhD   Most professionals are aware that the FDA Reauthorization Act of 2017 has been passed into law and, as a provision of this bill, the FDA is in the process of developing a category of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids for adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. Specifically, the FDA is charged with

Sometimes it’s the little things in life that require attention, such as how to keep track of your sunglasses and Hearables (c.f. USPTO #10052235: Lanyard with integrated ear plugs and retractable sheath).   Sometimes it’s the little ones in life that deserve attention. “Headset enabling extraordinary hearing” (USPTO #10051372 ) by Bose doesn’t bestow auditory superpowers on children. But it does teach them about sound

This series’ first post introduced William J Baumol’s theory of economic cost disease, manifest in personal service professions’ and industries’ reliance on fixed-time, face-to-face encounters to deliver and perfect the goods.  Generally stated, Baumol’s conundrum is that service wages must rise on the back of stalled productivity while manufacturing labor costs rise naturally on the back of increasing productivity. The

Telecommunications have come a long way since the days of party lines when Ernestine the operator routed calls to the right party while everyone listened in on the line. Forget about HIPAA: privacy wasn’t part of the deal. ID was by oral confirmation (“Yes, I’m the party to whom you’re speaking.”), all done while holding a heavy device to ear

A previous post described Baumol’s “cost disease” as a metaphorical affliction of personal services ranging from hair care to audiology, all requiring face-to-face service delivery. In his book on the topic, Baumol identified the wage market conundrum facing audiology practices that dispense manufactured devices, using an illustrative example of 2% wage increases across the board:   If manufacturing wages rise