Hearing Economics

It took less than a year for “Hearable” to replace “hearing aid” in the media.  That remarkable event happened on August 12 when Forbes headlined a “face-off” between two Hearables, which turned out to be Starkey’s Halo versus GN Resound’s LinX2 hearing aids.  As Forbes puts it: High-end digital hearing aids keep getting better and better. … For the past

HHTM editors have been spending their time uneconomically of late, weeding out problems (and learning new words) that we didn’t even know existed back in 2011 when HHTM began.  Economics is defined as the allocation of scarce resources–a familiar concept to any audiologist who runs a practice; ditto for any editor responsible for gathering original content. Productivity and bottom lines

“Signal & Noise” is a bimonthly column by Brian Taylor, AuD. Segmentation is a powerful tool to better understand what the marketplace values. Perhaps more importantly, from the perspective of the business manager, segmenting demographic data sheds light on gaps in the market that can be turned into opportunities for those with entrepreneurial spirit. We know, for example, when we

“Peeling the Onion” is a monthly column by Harvey Abrams, PhD.  For today’s post, I’d like to combine the subjects of two previous, seemingly unrelated “Peeling the Onion” posts –the Transtheoretical (Stages of Change) Model  and MarkeTrak (MT) 9. MT9 Goes to the IOM Meeting   On June 30th I attended the Second Meeting of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee

Privacy and Security guidelines for ear-level testing and ear-level devices were discussed in a previous post which focused on who has authority over data and devices.  Authority is not the same as ownership, which is the subject of today’s post. Willingness to endorse and participate in these Big Data-driven environments will vary among stakeholder groups (manufacturers, suppliers, consumers), depending on their

Part 2 of Dr. Amlani’s Self-Efficacy post concludes with an intriguing scenario for hearing aids.  “With a new driver at the helm of this multi-billion dollar industry, the landscape is sure to change from dusty and dirty to beaches and rolling hills.”  Read on! In 2013, Amlani and colleagues{{1}}[[1]]Amlani AM, Taylor B, Levy C, Robbins, C. (2013). Utility of smartphone

Frequent guest contributor Amyn Amlani, PhD, introduces the concept of self-efficacy to our field as one means of revving up the idling hearing services and devices market. The US hearing healthcare market has yet to experience appreciable growth. Since 1980, estimates indicate that the hearing healthcare market encounters an organic growth of 0.125 million Americans with hearing difficulties annually, even

Ear devices by any name are fast becoming brain portals.  Recent Hearables and Augmentation posts probably struck most readers–especially clinicians who fit traditional amplification on aging patients–as fanciful riffs about gimmicky trifles.   The growing diversity of patents in the bimonthly list argues that we pay attention to devices and toys which are outside traditional hearing manufacturing and aim for

  Hearing Economics is pleased to welcome back Terry Ross as this week’s guest blogger.  When times get tense and maybe too serious, we can always count on him to put things in perspective and relieve the tension, as he did last year with the Costco-Phonak hookup. Today, Terry takes on Hearables, the new kid on the hearing amplifier block and

As ear level devices begin to deliver and curate Content choices, the Demand curve will expand and usher in a new world of security and privacy concerns for consumers, providers, suppliers, and government regulations.  Big Data will be in our midst. (previous post) Big Data.  So many reasons to embrace it; so many concerns to keep it at arm’s length, at