Innovations In Hearing

New forms of counseling and customization – services that complement existing best practice clinical protocols — are needed for audiology to remain a sustainable profession in the era of patient-driven hearing aid fittings Last Friday, October  5, in what was perceived by many to be a surprise move, the FDA approved a Bose self-fitting hearing aid that can be purchased

by Melanie Ferguson, PhD In a teleconference of the American Academy of Audiology (AAA) Strategic Documents committee last week, someone made a comment that if audiologists are charging insurance companies for a service, this needs to be supported by evidence and guidelines. Good point. In the UK about three years ago we had exactly the same discussion. In 2015, a

With the FDA expected to publish initial guidelines for Over-the-Counter hearing aids as early as this fall, the time is now for audiologists to formulate their product and service strategies for responding to deregulation. My recommendation–as an expert in business strategy and patient engagement, a hearing health advocate, and a person with hearing loss—is that audiologists conduct market tests now

by Errol Davis Pattern recognition can be used to interpret pure tone test results as an essential aspect of a “smart” hearing health system that can sort basic hearing patterns into traditional audiological groups of routine or complex problems. Our software stemmed from many years of experience in audiology and medical clinics which included working at a major medical school,

by Brian Taylor “Signal & Noise” is a bimonthly column by Brian Taylor, AuD.   About a year ago, I had the privilege of co-authoring a book with Vinaya Manchaiah of Lamar University. We never expected the book, titled The Role of Communication Partners in the Audiological Rehabilitation, to be a big seller (I can assure you, it is not),

Nancy Williams, a person with hearing loss who holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and is President and Founder of Auditory Insight, published an informative paper in MedCity News about the trend toward consumerization of health care. She shared excellent insights about this transformation in the wake of the OTC Hearing Aid Act of 2017 which instructs the FDA

by Barbara Weinstein, PhD A guiding principle of work with older adults is patient-centered care (PCC) where patient preferences guide the decision-making process. Three domains of behavior govern shared decision-making. Clinicians must elicit the feelings and belief systems of the persons with which we work. We must be transparent about the diagnosis and expected benefits and harms of interventions, and

Self-Fitting Hearing Aids: Are They Effective?   Fortunately, audiologists at the National Acoustic Laboratories (NAL) have been on the forefront of  self-fitting hearing aid (SFHA) research. Since 2001, they have published a series of important papers examining the efficacy of SFHAs, many of which have been published at the open access journal, Trends in Hearing. In May, Gitte Kiedser and

Although the FDA has yet to officially codify the Over-the-Counter (OTC) Hearing Aid Act, signed into law in August 2017, one subcategory of amplification device, self-fitting hearing aids (SFHA), has been sold online by a couple of companies for some time. According to published reports, for an amplification device to be classified as a self-fitting hearing aid, it should enable

by Brian Taylor “Signal & Noise” is a bimonthly column by Brian Taylor, AuD.   Last fall, JAMA published a thought-provoking commentary on the unnecessary harm caused by the words used by physicians.  Known as iatrogenesis, the inadvertent occurrence of a disease or illness caused by a physician or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedure can have serious unintended consequences.