Remote Hearing Health Check

According to World Health Organisation figures, over 460 million people worldwide suffer from disabling hearing loss. Scaling of the current hearing healthcare model to meet this need will require considerable public and private investment to train more healthcare professionals, build more clinics, and install expensive audiological equipment. The design challenge was to transform this current hearing healthcare paradigm, enabling clinics to treat more patients whilst maintaining a high standard of professional care.

We explored the in-clinic care of Cochlear implant patients to find opportunities to scale efficiency and treat more patients. A clinician’s day is predominately structured around 1-hour patient consultations. These appointments may run over-time, patients may not show up and some patients who are progressing well with their hearing may not have even needed to attend the clinic. In a busy clinic, access to expensive hearing test equipment is the cause of a significant bottleneck which is exacerbated by an unpredictable appointment schedule. Our Remote Check tool alleviates this resource congestion, allowing clinicians to manage more patients in less time.

Remote Check frees up a clinic's time and resources, enabling the clinic to provide care to more patients and prioritise resources based on need. From a patient perspective, Remote Check provides convenient access to care so that patients no longer need to take time off work or school, or spend time and money travelling to unnecessary in-clinic appointments.

One of the key design challenges we faced was building accurate and reliable hearing tests. Typically these hearing tests are performed in a sound proof room, under the supervision of a clinician. It is difficult to mimic this controlled environment in the real world and ensure a clinically valid test result when the test is performed via a smartphone app. Hence, we have designed these tests to stream calibrated sound directly to the patient's Cochlear sound processor(s) thereby negating any effects of environmental sounds. Note: Remote Check is not yet available for supply in Australia. It has been launched in the UK, Germany and New Zealand. It is soon to be rolled out in India and across more European countries.