More than 100 hearing care professionals from across the US participated in a collaborative pediatric conference co-sponsored by Oticon Pediatrics, Oticon Medical, Interacoustics and Hearing Screening Associates, held November 3-5 in Glenview, Illinois. The three-day conference explored the latest research and technologies designed to improve and enhance the Pediatric Patient Journey. Presentations by subject experts in a range of research and clinical audiology focused on the advantages of a collaborative approach to hearing healthcare for infants, children and teens.
Oticon Pediatrics sponsored three dedicated sessions on pediatric hearing care and solutions. Guest presenter Bari Pham, Au.D., Pediatric Audiologist at Cook Children's Health Care System, TX, shared the latest evidence on family centered care as the gold standard of service delivery for healthcare providers. Dr. Pham reported that a family centered approach leads to better health outcomes and better use of financial resources. The presentation also looked at the benefits and implementation of Motivational Interviewing strategies to help ensure patient and caregiver engagement and follow-through.
Don Schum, Ph.D., Vice President of Audiology for Oticon, Inc., offered conference participants a glimpse into the future of pediatric audiology. Dr. Schum pointed out that along with continued advances in digital technology, medical technologies and communication technologies, hearing care professionals can fully expect the diagnosis, treatment and habilitation of children with hearing loss to also evolve. Conference participants were invited to consider the potential for greater data sharing to improve the ability of hearing care providers to diagnose and for advances in digital signal processing to lead to improved treatments that may enable providers to better compensate for changes in auditory function.
The benchmark to measure the benefits of hearing aids — measurement of the improvement in speech intelligibility in a one-to-one scenario — was challenged in a session led by Nicolas Le Goff, Ph.D., a researcher in applied audiology at Oticon, Denmark. Dr. Le Goff suggested that the established benchmark poorly represents the benefits experienced by end-users in daily life where sound environments and listening tasks are much more complex. In his presentation, he showed how the latest hearing aid technology in Oticon Opn™ supports speech understanding of both adults and pediatric patients in more realistic communication scenarios (on-axis, off-axis, multiple speakers).
In a special workshop session, Oticon Pediatrics’ Candace Depp, Au.D., Manager of Pediatric Education and Training, discussed the ways that high performance wireless hearing instruments, like Oticon Opn™, meet the needs of “connected” teens and tweens who rely on smartphones, tablets and other devices, at home, at school and in social situations.
For more information about Oticon Pediatrics and the Oticon Opn™ family of hearing solutions, visit www.Oticon.com.