The ABC 7.30 report (5/10/15), on Australian Hearing and also  on the general Australian hearing aid industry  aired some of the imperfections in the most common hearing aid sales models in Australia, and rightly shared the importance of freely available quality hearing care for children.  It missed a few points: there was a large focus on regulation.

Regulation doesn’t necessarily mean improved services. Look at the taxi industry. The biggest employers will still be the biggest employers, even with regulation. I’m not convinced it would make any difference to standards of care.  The high profit in the hearing aid industry is in the retail end, and that’s a comfortable situation for many providers.  Independent audiologists are now in short supply.

Face to face audiology is expensive to carry out and poorly reimbursed by most health funds. Independent audiology is not reimbursed under Medicare, even though the equivalent optical tests are.

A proper hearing evaluation takes about an hour; the equipment costs about $100,000 to set up and most audiologists in Australia enjoy high salaries. Alongside this, there is evidence that people prefer the sound of hearing aids they have set up themselves (Keach, 2013), if the hearing aid system is designed to be used that way.  There is also evidence that self-diagnosis a very accurate way of identifying hearing loss in adults (Pierre et al., 2012; Noble,2013). You don’t really need someone else to tell you that you have difficulty hearing.

Professor Peter Blamey and I have backgrounds in the development of bionic ear technologies, and we moved from that heritage to spend about 10 years supplying innovative hearing aid technologies, some of which spun off from bionic ear work, to hearing aid companies all over the world.  Indeed, working for that company, which was owned by Melbourne University and by Venture Capital, we spent significant time in most of the world’s hearing aid companies.

Peter and I realised that in much of the world there are big financial barriers to getting hearing aids. So we decided to set up our own company and developed more technologies, so that it was easy for people to test their own hearing at home and then to set up their hearing aids themselves.
The Australian and Victorian Governments are stakeholders in our work, as we have been awarded grants and more than paid them back in export revenue and in stimulating manufacturing in Victoria.  Between the two companies we have created more than 50 high tech jobs and trained many students in diverse disciplines.

The model of care we have developed is fair, very high quality, scalable, and uses Australian inventions.

Professor Blamey was awarded the prestigious Clunies Ross medal for his work in hearing aids.  We have both been awarded high profile academic, business and community service awards for our work, including the Australian Good Design Award in the Social Innovation category.

Basically, we have developed a scalable tele-health model that people can access anywhere they have internet, via a Smartphone, computer or tablet.  Our clients have all they need to set up their hearing aids themselves. We can do it for them, or with them remotely, with our team of 25 highly qualified experts, including audiologists and hearing scientists.  We also have our own full-service clinic, for people with complex hearing issues, or who simply prefer a face to face service. We charge a simple hourly fee and the hearing aids cost the same as they would if bought on line.

Our hearing aids are top premium, yet by cutting out the middle man, we save the client thousands of dollars. We incorporate a lot of community work into our model, and provide special rates for Veterans.

Our goal has been to make excellent hearing aids more accessible, and we are succeeding with thousands of happy customers.  Check out the website to learn more.

References:

Self-reported hearing difficulties, main income sources, and socio-economic status; a cross-sectional population-based study in Sweden (2012). Pierre, PV., *, Anders Fridberger, A., Wikman,A., Alexanderson,K; BMC Public Health, 12:874

Self-Assessment of Hearing (2013) Noble, W., Plural Publishing

Investigation of Hearing Aid Provision via the First Fit efficacy of Three Adaptive Dynamic Range Optimisation (ADRO) Fitting Methods (2013); EE Keach

Thesis submitted in partial for the degree of Master of Audiology, University of Auckland

Blamey Saunders hears is  commtted ti quality hearing aids at a very fair price