Hearing Economics

Successful hearing aid users and their audiologists know that regular follow-up appointments are de rigueur to monitor hearing ability and ear canal health; adjust hearing instruments to match hearing status and wearer needs; and check instrument performance against manufacturer’s specs. That last step is important but routine and a bit boring. It also raises questions, at least in this audiologist’s

by Amyn Amlani, PhD Healthcare has moved towards shared decision-making as an engagement strategy that allows providers and patients to work together in determining treatment intervention and management. Decision aids are part of the shared decision-making process that encourages active participation by patients in their healthcare decisions. Over the past few months, readers have been introduced to the application of decision

The feature image above depicts Facebook’s vision for a tragus conduction Hearable (patent #10999668), the idea being to mechanically vibrate the tragus to produce one or more sound waves that travel down an ear canal of the user’s ear toward an eardrum; the purpose being to generate sounds and allow ambient sounds to reach a user while reducing sound leakage. Nature

by Amyn Amlani, PhD Last month, the reader was provided an overview of the application of decision aids in health care. Recall that decisions aids, such as educational booklets, DVDs, and Web-based interactive tools, provide patients with information to guide treatment decisions regarding their health care needs, values, and preferences. In this month’s blog, we look at the implementation and

Did We Miss Anything?   Apple’s lengthy patent 10979796, In-ear wireless listening device, has 68 figures to support its comprehensive ambitions. The device form (above) is familiar to all by now, but this one purports to house a host of improvements to address the many aspects of headset design. Specifically it takes on size and weight, comfort, shape, individual fit, appearance/aesthetics,

A Better Mouse Trap, Revisited   Included in this month’s list is patent #10950211, by Kah. Entitled External ear insert for hearing comprehension enhancement, it appears to be a Helmhotz-type resonating device placed somewhere in the ear to shift natural pinna and canal resonances. Compare this to Goode’s patent #4556122, Ear acoustical hearing aid, which aimed in the same direction

by Amyn Amlani, PhD Shared-decision making is a core component of evidence-based health care, allowing for evidence to guide decisions about the treatment intervention of that individual patient while considering their needs, values, and preferences. In hearing care, providers are skilled at diagnosing hearing sensitivity but are less effectively in assessing whether the treatment they recommend aligns with the values

GN Hearing’s two distinct lines of business have long covered diverse hearing needs, ranging from medical devices for hearing loss to head-worn devices for communications and streaming.  Its newly proposed device (Fig 1, right) may like a molar tooth but GN remains firmly situated in the ear (#114 in the illustration).  True to its history of wide-ranging innovation for auditory

The series on hearing aid pricing began in fall 2020 with a look at average nominal (Part 1) and inflation-adjusted (Part 2) wholesale costs. As we moved into 2021, readers were presented with findings for the average nominal (Part 3) and inflation-adjusted (Part 4) retail costs. In the fifth, and final, installment of this series, we do the unthinkable and

Use a 9 Iron and Watch for Innocent Bystanders   Added features keep popping up on Hearables, as expected, but they’re also showing up in clever ways on hearing aids, targeting specific and general needs of wearers. Here are two fun forays in that direction from this month’s patent list: Starkey’s 10894194 for an Ear-wearable device providing golf advice data