But Wait…There’s More! (Part 1)
“Peeling the Onion” is a monthly column by Harvey Abrams, PhD. As widely reported, President Donald Trump signed the FDA Reauthorization Act into law on August 18th. As part of this law, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is directed to create and regulate a new category of hearing aids that can be sold…
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Costco’s Business Model: Build It and They Will Come
Costco has enthusiastically embraced hearing aids as store-in-store revenue builders in all of its burgeoning warehouse locations since the mid-90s. The rate of Costco hearing aid center growth (feature image, red) has outstripped warehouse growth (blue) in recent years. Both are on fast tracks. Last Giant Standing, Building-Wise Costco’s Big Box footprint is…
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On the PCAST Report and the FDA Hearings
Downstream Consequences of Aging is a bi-monthly series written by guest columnist Barbara Weinstein, PhD. Today’s post is especially timely, on the heels of the IOM final report and anticipating the FDA review process that generated 160 stakeholder comments.1 The focus of the public workshop hosted by the FDA on April 21, entitled “Streamlining…
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Assessing the Validity of MarkeTrak IX Adoption Rates
Today’s post by frequent contributor Amyn Amlani, PhD, is a fitting salute to David Kirkwood, who retires this week as Editor-in-Chief of HHTM. Kirkwood was first to report MarkeTrak IX findings, a month before they became available to the public. Wayne Staab, HHTM’s new Editor-in-Chief, followed Kirkwood’s lead with two posts analyzing portions of the…
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Where’d Those Numbers Come From? Data for the Pricing Posts
Premium Pricing for major technological innovations raised average prices of hearing aids by about $1000 from 1994 to 2011, as shown in a previous post and reproduced above. The Data Fig 1 was derived from the numbers contained in Table 1, footnoted to explain origins, derivations, and assumptions. Nominal average Price (left column of…
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