Hearing Economics

“Peeling the Onion” is a monthly column by Harvey Abrams, PhD “There is nothing wrong with change as long as it is in the right direction” – Winston Churchill   To date, the theme of my posts has focused on the two primary approaches to audiologic care – medical and rehabilitative. The rehabilitative approach recognizes adult-onset hearing loss as a

The last post described future ear-level devices as conduits for highly personalized, exquisitely targeted, near and far-field individual communication systems that work in real time.  Such a vision combines past and ongoing R&D efforts in Hearables, Hearing Aids, and Augmented Reality (AR).  As the media hypes it, these will not be your grandfather’s hearing aids and this will not be

A previous post floated the idea that ear-level amplification processing, including cochlear implants, represents the first and most advanced wearable Augmented Reality (AR)  available to a widespread consumer market to date.  It also noted that AR is considered an “emerging” field in which many psychoacoustic thoughts and hearing aid components are being rediscovered and rethought by smart people in other fields.

“Signal & Noise” is a bimonthly, or sometimes monthly, column by Brian Taylor, AuD.   Selecting and fitting hearing aids is, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, the primary tool audiologists and hearing instrument specialists use to address the needs of adults with hearing loss. Today, it is the hearing aid that generates the primary stream of

Recent patent and Hearables posts alluded to augmented reality Apotheke Vienna  (AR) without defining the term.  Audiologists think of “AR” as a professional activity called Aural Rehabilitation, not a recreational activity like Augmented Reality. If we think of augmented reality at all,  it’s as  an iTunes app to beam us off the transporter pad with William Shatner.  Unbeknownst to most of us,

“Peeling the Onion” is a monthly column by Harvey Abrams, PhD I concluded last month’s post by describing The Chronic Care Model (CCM); Wagner, 1998) which consists of six components considered critical for improving outcomes among patients with chronic health conditions: Self-Management Support Delivery System Design Decision Support Clinical Information Systems Organization of Health Care Community Assuming you bought my

“Signal & Noise” is a bimonthly column by Brian Taylor, AuD.   In addition to fitting conventional hearing aids, audiologists and hearing instrument specialists may have the opportunity to adapt an à la carte approach to technology with a menu of offerings tailored to the “just good enough” needs of the individual. This menu may include PSAPs, hearables, devices like

Amidst all the crowd-funded Hearable hype, with Nanoplug coming unplugged and others sure to follow, the Big 6 and a few well-seasoned companies and visionaries continue to quietly and efficiently amp up technology for ear-level applications.  Today’s lengthy list of new patents in the last half of this post shows the Big 6 firmly in the saddle, at a fast

Hearing Economics is pleased to announce Brian Taylor as a new columnist.  Dr. Taylor plans to help us get to core concepts in a series of bimonthly discussions entitled “Signal & Noise.”  Today’s post marks his debut column, describing actual data to bear on outcomes from available ear-level amplification technologies.  Welcome, Brian, and thanks for bringing data with you!  

“Peeling the Onion” is a monthly column by Harvey Abrams, PhD. In last month’s post, I discussed the influence of our profession’s early history on our current self-perception of audiology as a medical model of care and suggested that we may want to consider reframing our profession as a rehabilitative discipline.  In fact, there are other possible models for us