Hearing aids and audiology have suffered from over refining the same path over and over. Commercial and other interests have benefited from this narrow approach.

Like much of medicine, audiology is essentially an apprenticeship profession where people who were taught some years ago teach audiologists. In some audiology schools it is possible for the teachers to have had little real world experience. I have worked in Universities, teaching audiology (three to be precise), and have studied or worked in three different countries, but I have also been really lucky to have had worked with some brilliant and scientifically driven clinicians.

One of these I have written about before, and that is Dafydd Stephens, sadly recently deceased. I worked with him in a really interesting clinical model in a prominent London hospital, where most people seeking hearing aids went a brief patient journey. Those people who needed more assistance were few, but had access to an extraordinary clinical team. My learning from hearing aid services is this: People who are able, can set up their own hearing aids, if they have hearing aids specifically developed for this; and those who really need help, need access to solid experience and clinical skill.

In some hearing aid sales models, about half the cost of the hearing aid is a service fee, so if you are buying in this model, you should expect to have a lot of very good quality assistance – possibly as much as several thousand dollars worth. If you are buying on line, make sure there is a support model, and that the technology has been designed for this.

Our hearing aids are, which brings me to a second great influence in helping me join science and technology, with audiological knowledge and experience, and that is Professor Peter Blamey, the other half of the Blamey Saunders team.