Hearing Health from the Comfort of Your Home: Lucid & Independa Launch Smart TV-Based Assessment

All right, so I am Dr.

Amy Sarow,

and I’m really excited to be a guest host on This Week

In Hearing. And I’m the Lead Audiologist for Soundly,

where we help consumer s get good information and

educate them on their hearing health journey.

I’m excited to be joined today by Bennett Griffin,

who is the executive vice president of research

and development for Lucid Hearing.

And we’re going to be discussing an exciting announcement.

Lucid Hearing and Independa have launched the world’s first smart

TV based hearing assessment on the LG Smart TVs.

So Bennett, thanks so much for being here today.

And I would just like to start by

talking a little bit about Lucid.

So we know that Lucid is a leading provider of holistic

hearing health care and located in more than

500 hearing health clinics nationwide.

Now,

for those of us- since our audience has hearing health

care providers, for those who don’t know,

could you just share a bit more about Lucid?

Absolutely, and it’s great to be with you today, Amy.

So,

Lucid Hearing has been around for

a little over a dozen years now,

and we are both a manufacturer and designer of hearing aids.

And we also are a clinic company.

So we have over 500 clinics across the United States.

Most of our hearing aid clinics are within other buildings.

So, for example,

we have a lot of clinics inside Sam’s Club wholesale stores.

And so we have the benefit and the luxury of both designing

and creating products and also delivering that service

component and helping people hear better and working right

with them with our licensed hearing instrument

specialists and audiologists.

Great. Well,

it sounds like there’s a lot of options that Lucid

is offering and exciting things happening.

Yeah,

and we’re seeing a lot of exciting things happening

in hearing healthcare in general.

Just this month we celebrated world hearing day.

And as I mentioned,

Lucid has partnered with Independa and just launched

the world’s first smart TV based hearing assessment.

Could you share more about that exciting announcement with us?

Happy to do it.

And we are really excited about this and our

partnership with Independa and with LG.

So this new hearing assessment is available directly on

television in folks living rooms across the country.

And Independa has a platform,

it’s a health hub platform that runs

inside the LG Smart TV interface.

And Lucid Hearing now has a hearing assessment that is a

part of this independa health hub

and it allows folks right from the.

Comfort of their couch to be able to begin that

exploration on their hearing health journey.

And we’re real thrilled to have the opportunity

to meet people in yet another new way.

Great.

And I’m curious about the choice to incorporate

the assessment into TVs.

So was there any research or thoughts

about why use a TV for this?

It well,

there’s a great opportunity with folks in their homes.

There are other online assessments that are already

available on computers, tablets, and smartphones.

And the TV is a new vehicle to reach people in a more

comfortable way in a situation in their home

where it’s non threatening, it’s easy to use,

and it’s a comfortable way to introduce people

to hearing health. Yeah, that makes sense.

So many of us have a TV, so, yeah,

it seems like a practical way to get that assessment out there.

So who would be an ideal candidate

for this type of assessment?

Well,

we think televisions are often the tip of the arrow

with identifying hearing health issues,

and often it’s a spouse or a kid or a loved one who’s noticing

that the television is up a little

louder than it used to be.

And so we think that as a casual indicator is a perfect way then

to use that same device to get a little

more information about that.

So an ideal candidate is someone who’s at home and who maybe

has been turning that TV up a little more than they used to.

And now right there,

they can take the next steps and start evaluating their hearing

through an assessment. Yeah, that absolutely makes sense.

I’m sure that our audience of hearing healthcare providers

can relate to stories where family members have said, oh,

my spouse or my dad is turning the TV up really loud.

So, yeah, that’s a great point.

Now, let’s say if I’m a consumer,

could you walk me through the steps that

I would need to access this technology?

What do I need in order to take it, and how does it work?

So,

it’s available on all LG smart TVs that have

been made over the last several years.

And so LG has an interface that allows

you to navigate the options on the TV,

and the independent health hub is one of those options.

So getting into the hearing assessment is as simple

as launching that independa health hub.

And then right there within the suite of services,

there’s a lucid hearing assessment that you can simply

select with the remote control on the TV.

And that brings you into the hearing assessment process,

which walks you right through that on the TV.

And you use your remote, just like you have been,

to change channels to take the assessment right there

from your couch. Yeah, well, that sounds easy.

And intuitive,

most people are used to using a remote or looking

for something on the screen there.

Let’s say I’m the consumer now, I’ve completed this assessment.

What happens at the end with the results?

How do I know something about what I did with that assessment?

Yeah,

so the assessment walks you through step by step and you use

the remote, the assessment, and then at the conclusion,

it presents some information about

what the assessment has found.

And there’s different options that then are presented

to the customer or the consumer.

So if there’s a perceived mild to moderate hearing loss,

we have the opportunity to talk about OTC hearing aids and

present more information about those kinds of products.

If there’s not much of a hearing loss

or no perceived hearing loss,

we could talk about the education around

hearing health care, hearing protection,

how do you maintain your healthy hearing for as long as you can?

And we also have the opportunity, if you’d like,

to get more in terms of a hearing

test at one of our clinics,

we actually have the opportunity for you to look and find a

clinic that would be close by, and those are free as well.

And you can even schedule an appointment

at a clinic that would be near you.

And if you want to go in and speak to a specialist or an

audiologist and get a full hearing test in a sound booth.

So all of that is possible

to choose and to navigate through the hearing

assessment on the TV. Yeah, well, that’s great.

So it’s really holistic in terms of options.

So even if I don’t have any hearing loss,

I can think about ways to protect my hearing

or if I want to know more information,

I can find a location and go in person and find out more.

Exactly. Yeah,

and I know we had talked a little bit about how Lucid

offers OTC options alongside also prescription options.

Could you tell us more about that?

Happy to. Yeah, so at Lucid hearing,

we really take a lifelong view to hearing health,

and we are designing products and services to help

people through that entire lifelong journey.

So we’re really passionate about hearing protection products,

even for infants and for adults and older adults as well.

We’re also passionate about helping people with hearing

health care wherever they are on that journey.

So for some folks,

an OTC solution that they can try at home and experiment with

themselves is really the best next step and helps

them begin that process of hearing health.

So we make products that are designed for that exciting new

OTC category and helping people with

mild to moderate hearing loss.

We also make products that we sell through our clinics

that are full prescription hearing aids and.

So if that’s where you’re at on your hearing health journey,

we want to be able to help you in that way as well.

And we also have the opportunity for folks

to get started with an OTC hearing aid,

and then we can actually upgrade that to a prescription

hearing aid to one of our clinics.

So, really, we take this lifelong view about hearing,

and we want to meet the customer wherever they are on that

journey and help them with getting the best

hearing that they can get with their ears.

Yeah, I think that’s great.

And I know, as we were talking, too,

about OTC is new in the hearing help landscape

and figuring out how to navigate that.

Is there anything that you would want to share or talk to when

we’ve been focused more on the consumers for just the moment?

But how about for a hearing health care provider?

What would you like them to know about

Lucid or about any of the offering?

Well, first of all,

we’re really excited and bullish about OTC in general,

because there’s such a population of folks that

have the need for hearing health care,

that have never received hearing health care.

And it’s an unusual and somewhat unique market

in the world and in the United States,

in that there’s so many people who need care that have

chosen nothing up to now.

And so OTC, we believe,

is an exciting new way to reach a new segment

of the population that, for whatever reason,

whether it’s accessibility or cost or fear even,

that they simply haven’t gone in to

see a specialist or an audiologist.

This is a way to introduce them to caring for their hearing

and exploring what they’ve been missing in the world.

And so we think OTC is exciting because it’s a new set of tools

to help us reach people that we’re not reaching up

to now through our clinics.

And we think it’s also,

for the specialists out there,

a great new opportunity to reach another group of people.

So we think it’s additive.

We think it helps grow the business.

We think it helps more people hear better.

And that’s really our mission.

So we’re excited about it.

Yeah, great.

And I like that the opportunity to kind of meet people where

they’re at and provide them the care they need,

no matter what that looks like.

Exactly. All right.

And is there anything else you’d like to share with us about

things that are coming later this year or projects

that Lucid is working on at the moment?

So we think the current climate for hearing health is a really

exciting climate. With the OTC rule that came out last fall,

there’s been an increase in media coverage,

there’s more awareness about hearing health broadly in the

United States. And we think that’s a great thing, both for.

You know,

the customer and also for those of us that are helping

those customers with their hearing health.

So we’ve got a whole menu of things that

we’ll be bringing out through the year.

We’ve got some new products that are coming.

We’ve got new products both in the prescription space and in

the OTC space and in the hearing protection space, which, again,

we’re really passionate about.

We’ve also got these opportunities is to continue

to meet folks in new digital ways.

And so the independent LGTV assessment is a great example of

how we’re looking to innovate and find new ways to meet people

wherever they are and help them learn more about hearing and

learn more about hearing health and then take those

next steps to get the best hearing they can have.

Yeah, well, that’s great.

And just so many exciting things coming, I think,

in the future with hearing healthcare,

so yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing this with us today.

And I was glad to learn more about Lucid and this assessment

that’s available now and all of the options

that are available on the market as well.

Been a great pleasure speaking with you.

Thanks so much for having me.

Great. Well, thanks, Bennett.

And thanks to our audience for tuning in today’s.