Newly Published Studies Could be a Watershed Moment Toward Third Party Funding of Hearing Devices
by Brian Taylor, AuD, and Kelly Tremblay, PhD Two studies, published by JAMA Otolaryngology on November 8th are compulsory reads for hearing care professionals concerned about accessibility and affordability of hearing-related services. Both studies, which relied on insurance claims data from the OptumLabs Data Warehouse, a division of the for-profit UnitedHealth Group, add to the…
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Hearing Technologies & How Audiologists Can Embrace These for the Future
by Kathryn ‘Kat’ Penno It’s no surprise that the healthcare industry has gained a lot of attention and media hype about being ripe for disruption. Audiology and the hearing aid market, in particular, is an interesting case. For many years the majority of the audiology profession has relied on a product to generate most of…
Read MoreNew Pathways to Care: How Self-Directed Care Could Change Audiology….For the Better Part 2
Two broad categories of patients – help seekers with hearing devices and help seekers without hearing devices – will benefit from new forms of counseling and customization in a market landscape where persons with hearing loss can self-direct their care. Part 1 examined self-fitting hearing aids and the role audiologists could play in their selection…
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Improving Patient Engagement with Hearables and PSAPs
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…
Read MoreNavigating the Road Ahead, Part 4: What about “Hearing Triage”?
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…
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OTC Hearing Aids: The View from Persons With Hearing Loss
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…
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