US Ear Device Patents in October 2018
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?…
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Cost Effectiveness of Access to Hearing Care: An Analysis of CMS Data
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…
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A Perfunctory Peep at the Economic Value of Direct-to-Consumer Hearing Devices
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,…
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US Ear Device Patents in August 2018
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…
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The Metaphor Monologues: Treatment Options for Chronic Cost Disease of Hearing Healthcare
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…
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