What is the Best Way to Prevent Hearing Loss in Communities?

A modern approach to proactive care

However obvious it may sound, one of the best ways to prevent hearing loss in a community is by adopting a proactive approach to care.

A proactive approach includes—among other things—a desire to better understand the health of your community, coupled with a willingness to improve current systems, programmes, and methods as they relate to the provision of community healthcare.

Naturally, this includes the adoption of new and groundbreaking technologies that can help to streamline existing healthcare processes and accelerate speed to detection, diagnosis, and care. To achieve success, such technology must be accessible, reliable, and designed with communities in mind.

AUDIMETROID by Hearing Diagnostics is the world’s first purpose-built hearing technology for community-based healthcare providers. It’s lightweight and easy to use, and it delivers clinical levels of accuracy without the need for a hospital or audiologist.

Preventing hearing loss in communities through more accessible testing:

It’s not typical that a patient can simply walk into a community healthcare provider and receive a hearing test. On the contrary, in the United States there are often multiple barriers to access that prevent adequate testing or treatment for hearing loss, including inaccessible testing facilities and a national shortage of trained audiologists. Typically, a patient must first see a physician who can then make a referral to an audiologist. From there, it’s not uncommon for patients to wait weeks before they actually undergo a hearing test and receive any results.

Given the profound impact that hearing loss can have on individuals and communities – including increased risk of depression and cognitive decline, communication difficulties, reduced quality of life, decreased earning potential and substantial economic costs – it’s imperative that communities provide pathways to hearing testing that are readily accessible and easily navigable.

Unlike traditional hearing tests, AUDIMETROID can be deployed by any healthcare provider, in almost any location. Staff can safely, easily administer a hearing test using AUDIMETROID, even if they don’t have formal training in audiology. And because AUDIMETROID was designed to be lightweight and wireless, it can be deployed in virtually any setting, including pharmacies, community centers, or retirement homes. All that’s required is a safe, quiet room.

And with AUDIMETROID, results are delivered in near real-time, so patients are informed almost immediately of their hearing classification. Within minutes of taking a hearing test, a patient will know whether they have normal hearing, mild to moderate hearing loss, or severe hearing loss that requires onward referral to an audiologist for further testing and diagnosis.

Preventing hearing loss in communities through more accurate, more reliable testing:

Just because an option for hearing testing lies in the hands of community healthcare providers and not with hospitals, does not mean that lower standards for reliability or accuracy should be expected, or accepted.

AUDIMETROID deploys results with clinical levels of accuracy, and ensures that no patient with hearing loss is ever misdiagnosed. The Hearing Diagnostics Engine—the core, industry-defining technology behind AUDIMETROID—all but eliminates missed or misdiagnosis by accurately deducing which sounds a patient actually heard through application of a unique spatial testing paradigm and a state-of-the-art statistical framework.

The result is a level of accuracy that surpasses that of traditional PTA-based tests (pure-tone audiogram), which consistently misdiagnose two in ten patients.
To learn more about what happens during a hearing test with AUDIMETROID, you can read this article.

Preventing hearing loss in communities with purpose-built technology:

Deploying critical healthcare in a community setting requires an intentional, considered approach.

Unlike healthcare delivered in hospitals or medical facilities, healthcare delivered in community settings – like retailers, community centers, or even retirement homes and schools – must be agile and uniquely suited for the environments in which it’s deployed.

AUDIMETROID is purpose-built hearing technology for community healthcare providers. It’s an incredibly lightweight solution that’s easily deployed in any number of community-based environments. Moreover, any community retailer or healthcare provider can safely administer a hearing test using AUDIMETROID, without formal training in audiology.

The software that runs AUDIMETROID is straightforward to administer and comes already implemented in the hardware. The hardware itself includes just a set of headphones, a smartphone, and a response button. The test takes only ten minutes, and the results are easy to understand. From start to finish, a hearing test with AUDIMETROID requires no intervention or interpretation by the test administrator.

Designed specifically for use in community healthcare settings, AUDIMETROID is an efficient, effective alternative to traditional hearing testing that’s purpose-built to drive uptake of critical community healthcare by empowering providers to adopt a proactive approach to care.

The best way to see if AUDIMETROID is right for your team is to see it in action. Get in touch with a member of the team to schedule your demo.