Future Ear Radio

Guest: Dawn Heiman, AuD - Owner of Advanced Audiology Consultants, CEO of EntreAudiology, Podcast Host of The Hearing Wellness Journey, President-Elect of the Academy of Doctors of Audiology (ADA)

Topic: Differentiating via an Expansion of Audiological Services

Dawn joins Dave on the podcast this week to share her backstory of becoming an Audiologist, private practice owner, podcaster and now, the president-elect of ADA. 

Dawn shares her perspective of how the industry is evolving and why she believes it's so important for hearing professionals to find ways to differentiate themselves in the market on the basis of expertise. The two discuss a variety of avenues of care and specialties that can be honed in on, such as cognition, tinnitus, vestibular, and APD-based services, and how these specialty services can be financially viable. 

Guest: Jon Suen, AuD - PhD Candidate at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing; Predcotoral Trainee at Johns Hopkins Cochlear Center for Hearing & Public Health

Topic: Building a Bridge Between Audiology, Gerontology, Nursing and Public Health

Jon joins the podcast this week to discuss his personal story of how he wound up at Johns Hopkins. Jon's story is a fascinating one, as it involves a winding path that includes passion for American Sign Language, Gallaudet University for his AuD, and a stint with The Peace Corps. Ultimately, Jon found his way to Johns Hopkins where he now is mentored by folks like Dr. Frank Lin and Jennifer Wenzel, PhD.

Jon's work focuses on the intersection between Audiology, Gerontology, Nursing and Public Health. As Jon and Dave discuss, the community-based approach to Audiology that Jon is studying and helping to define, provides for a unique, collaborative opportunity for Audiologists to work within a broader team of healthcare professionals. 

For example, Jon describes a potential for audiologists to work in multidisciplinary programs like CAPABLE, whose goal is to support older adults “aging-in-place.” The team is comprised of a Nurse, Occupational Therapist, and Handy Person (who helps with home modifications). An audiologist could contribute very meaningfully to such a team, though most are currently not yet trained to consider social determinants of health for older adults with hearing loss.

Jon and Dave discuss how community based approaches to Audiology may allow for more opportunities for the Audiologist to help train and impart their expertise on fellow health professionals & community-based team members, which might ultimately help to expand the influence and benefits of Audiology to the broader population.

Transcript: here

Guest: Laurel Christensen, PhD - Chief Audiology Officer at GN Group

Topic: Charting the Past 30 Years in Hearing Aid Innovation 

Laurel sits down with Dave on the podcast this week to share her journey of going from working in her Dad's ENT practice as a teen to earning her PhD and ultimately joining GN Group, where she now serves as the company's Chief Audiology Officer. 

Along with sharing her story and some of her most important mentors along the way (specifically Larry Humes), Laurel also discusses her time at Etymotic and the outsize impact Mead Killion has made on the world of hearing health. 

The two discuss some of the big breakthroughs that have occurred within hearing aid technology dating back to the late 80's, and look at the current state of the devices and discuss the implications and use cases derived from modern breakthroughs that are underway. 

Transcript: here

Guests: Dr. Elaine Saunders, Co-Founder of Blamey & Saunders (acquired by Sonova); Kat Penno - Director of Hearing Health at Nuheara

Topic: 10 Years of Pioneering Telehealth & Remote Audiology

Dr. Elaine Saunders and Kat Penno join the podcast this week to look back at the past, present and future of Telehealth in the Audiology space. The three discuss Elaine's pioneering work at Blamey & Saunders, which was a remote-first, telehealth based Audiology company launched in 2011. 

During the conversation, Elaine shares about what growing a telehealth company was like a decade ago, how much has changed at the infrastructure level, how much more feasible telehealth has become, and ultimately, the vision for how telehealth will become more widely adopted and more viable for hearing professionals into the future. 

Transcript: here

Guest: Nick Morgan-Jones - Butterfly Audio

Topic: Sound Enhancing Wearables that Inspire People

Nick sits down with Dave on the podcast this week to discuss his passion project, Butterfly Audio, which is an attempt at totally reimagining "hearing aids." Nick, who was diagnosed with high-frequency hearing loss at 10 years old (now 28 years old), describes his own personal journey with hearing aids, which began with him deciding to abandon his prescribed hearing aids for the first 10 years of his diagnosis due to the social stigma associated with them.  

According to Nick, the problem that young people with hearing loss face is a market that largely caters to older adults. Everything from the advertising to the ways in which the products are described (hearing aids) are tailored toward folks with age-related hearing adults. As a result, young people are forced to treat their hearing losses with devices that have inherent connotations with old age. 

Nick believes that the design of the devices have almost uniformly followed suit with progressively becoming smaller and smaller. Why do hearing aids need to be "invisible?" Yes, some users want discreet devices, and that market is already being served with a variety of offerings, but as the two discuss, there are a variety of advantages to making devices clearly visible, and utilizing novel form factors and device positioning. 

As a designer by trade, Nick is designing, prototyping and attempting to build his own custom, "sound enhancing wearables," (again, note the change in language used) that he personally would feel inspired to use. As he notes, he's going to need help, so if his message resonates, his door is open and he welcomes you to connect with him.

Twitter: @ButterflyAudio_

LinkedIn: Nick Morgan-Jones

Transcript: here

Guest: Carl Robinson, CEO of Rumble Studio and Host of the Voice Tech Podcast

Topic: Rumble Studio: Creating Better Audio Production Tools

Carl joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss what he and his team are building at Rumble Studio and have a broad-based conversation about the innovation occurring in the audio production space. As the two discuss, audio is in its infancy as a medium and like any form of media is undergoing a significant transformation as it matures. We're seeing this in real-time as new audio formats are being introduced and popularized, such as social audio. 

What Carl's team is aiming to build is a platform that enables asynchronous podcast production, enabling an entirely new format of audio production. With Rumble, creators are able to generate a full podcast episode through an asynchronous exchange between host and guest(s), allowing for each side to incrementally build out the conversation, in their own time. As Carl and Dave discuss, this type of format lends itself to a number of interesting possibilities that live podcasting isn't well situated for, ultimately agreeing that we're entering into a new era of audio with a variety of new formats of content emerging.

Transcript: here

Guest: Brad Stewart, AuD - Owner of ClearLife Hearing Care; Co-Founder of AuDflow

Topic: Leveling Up the Hearing Care Experience 

Brad joins Dave this week to share his experience of working in private practice audiology for the last 10 years and how he views the evolution underway in the hearing health industry. They discuss Brad's hearing care consulting company, AuDflow, which is designed to help practices re-think their total patient experience - physical & digital - using a variety of innovative tools and services. 

For independent private practitioners competing against a slew of new competitors, from an increasing amount of big-box retailers to online sellers, it's important to match parity when it comes to the things that the new competition does well, such as digital marketing and automation. As the two discuss, the key to success into the future might be a combination of blending the things that are appealing of the new competition, with the non-commodifiable expertise inherent from one's education. It's then a matter of properly fusing the two together to create an overall patient experience that's harder and harder for the new competition to replicate or differentiate from themselves. 

Transcript: here

Guest: Angela Alexander, AuD - Owner of Auditory Processing Network and APDsupport.com

Topic: The Journey to Presenting about Auditory Processing Disorder at TEDx

Angela joins Dave on the podcast this week to share her journey of preparing for and ultimately presenting at TedX around Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). Angela describes how she landed the opportunity, the ups and downs that went along with preparing, the watershed moment that led to her piecing her talk together, and how everything culminated together to present a killer presentation. 

Angela's Audiology passion revolves around APD, and during this conversation, she shares the key points that she communicated through her talk and why APD is such an important facet to the future of Audiology. 

Guest: Andy Bellavia - Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp

Topic: A New Era in Hearing Loss Solutions

Andy joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss the continually evolving hearables and hearing health landscape. The two discuss the recent presidential executive order that urges the FDA to accelerate its timeline with issuing its over-the-counter hearing aid guidelines, and discuss why what's happening in the hearables space might ultimately supersede the OTC hearing aid act. 

The two go into depth about the three headed beast that stands in the way of hearing solution adoption - price, stigma and friction - and how each are systematically being chipped away at by technological innovation. In addition, Andy and Dave discuss BragiOS - a hearable-specific operating system - and the recent partnerships that Bragi has announced pertaining to BragiOS.

Finally, the two discuss the impact of voice technology to the long-term hearables trajectory, and the way that CEO's at Bragi, MiMi, Skullcandy, and Audioburst are all thinking about voice's role with hearables into the future.

Transcript: here

Guest: Brian Taylor, AuD - Director of Clinical Content Development at Signia

Topic: The Upside of the Increasing Amount of Hearing Solution Optionality

Brian joins Dave this week on the podcast to continue the recent string of conversations based around the evolving hearing health landscape. The two discuss where devices like Signia's Active hearing aids fit into the market, which look like earbuds but function as hearing aids. In addition, the two discuss how we're moving toward a future where it will be harder and harder to distinguish between hearing aids and hearables, which may ultimately play a significant role in the reduction of stigma.