Hearing News Watch

SAN FRANCISCO—What cochlear implant wearers have long yearned for—an entirely implantable system without the external transmitter, wire, microphone, and battery that are now standard—appears to have moved a step closer to reality this week. In a paper to be presented February 11 at the IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, researchers describe a newly developed low-power signal-processing

COLUMBUS—The Ohio legislature is considering a bill that would make Ohio only the fourth state in the nation to require health insurance companies to include hearing aids as part of their basic health coverage for people of all ages. Seventeen states require that health insurance benefits plans pay for hearing aids for children, but only three, relatively small, states–Arkansas, New

  The following post was originally published on February 5 and updated on February 6. By David H. Kirkwood ROCKVILLE, MD–Three more organizations concerned with hearing submitted comments to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week on the agency’s proposed guidance document, which would tighten existing restrictions on the marketing of personal sound amplification products (PSAPs). The International Hearing Society

By David H. Kirkwood EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ—There were a lot of hearing angles to the 2014 Super Bowl, played last Sunday in New Jersey. For one thing, there was the Seattle Seahawks’ much heralded (and much criticized) “12th Man,” as the team’s incredibly noisy legion of fans came to be known. As noted by ASHA’s Joe Cerquone on the Hearing Views

BALTIMORE, MD—Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute on Aging have found a correlation between hearing loss in older adults and a faster rate of shrinkage of the brain than occurs among people of the same age with better hearing. For their study, published in the journal NeuroImage, Frank Lin, MD, PhD, and his eight co-authors drew upon

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL–Etymotic Research has released a Home Hearing Test that enables people to monitor the hearing health of family members and friends without need to go to a professional office for testing. The hearing test, which was developed by audiologists, debuted at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and is now available for purchase. Unlike questionnaires

SAN ANTONIO–Allied Health Media, parent company of AudiologyOnline, has appointed Malia Johnson as continuing education sales director. Johnson has 24 years of experience in the allied health field track record in sales. As vice-president of recruitment at Welsh Bello, she oversaw the hiring, training, and evaluation of allied and nursing professionals in a number of different settings. In that role, she

By Jerry Northern More than 600 exuberant attendees gathered in Denver on January 26 to honor and celebrate the 100th birthday of the First Lady of Audiology, Dr. Marion Downs. Marion Downs is the internationally acclaimed audiologist who, among her many significant contributions to helping persons with hearing loss, brought attention to the importance of early identification of hearing loss

ROCKVILLE, MD—Consider the following: An estimated 40 million people in the United States have communication disorders. In Canada, a third of employed people who have hearing difficulties say that their conditions limit the amount or kind of work they can perform. More than 1.1 million Australians have difficulty communicating. These statistics and others like them have inspired organizations in six

Henry Meltsner, who with his friend and business partner Harold Spar, started Hal-Hen and Widex USA, died January 12 at the age of 92. Not only did the navy buddies start and run two of the most enduring American companies in the hearing industry, they successfully turned them over to the next second generation, their sons, Ron Meltsner and Eric