Interview with Brent Edwards, director of National Acoustic Laboratories.
The National Acoustic Laboratories, aka NAL, provides world-leading hearing research and evidence-based innovation to improve hearing health and transform the lives of people with hearing difficulties. It is a part of Hearing Australia. NAL collaborates with organisations around the world to innovate on novel solutions to hearing health services and technology, conducts sophisticated validation trials on treatment benefit, and provides insight into the needs of people with hearing loss and clinicians who treat them. NAL’s research findings are published in leading peer-reviewed journals and its solutions are used worldwide.
Question: What technological advances will change hearing healthcare in the future?
Brent Edwards: As we’ve seen with the explosion of interest in ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) is going to transform every industry, including the field of hearing healthcare. How, exactly, remains for the innovators to figure out and will depend on what unmet needs AI can fill.
How is NAL advancing these upcoming changes?
We are looking at AI and machine learning in a number of ways, including its use in identifying that someone has hearing loss from their speech pattern and its use in identifying whether someone is at risk of progressive hearing loss.
What big changes are coming for Audiology hearing service delivery?
The introduction of over-the-counter hearing aids in the US is forcing a conversation on the value of services delivered by traditional models. There is strong evidence, including data from NAL, that people are more successful with their hearing devices with successful assistance from a hearing care professional, but different people have different needs – needs for different technology solutions, services and delivery channels.
What will this change look like for the profession of audiology?
The most important improvement to hearing healthcare in the next few years will be diversity in channels, services, and technology solutions available to people who need hearing help.
Our traditional approach will continue to thrive, but audiology will need to adapt to a more personalised approach to hearing service delivery rather than the one-type-fits-all approach that has been the norm in our field for decades.
What would be your recommendation to decision makers in preparation for these changes?
As new approaches develop to meet the unique needs of different populations, the number of people accessing hearing health help will also increase in the future. Decision makers will need to consider carefully when and how to transform their modes of engagement and service depending on the needs of their clients and the business. It is equally important to meet the needs of hearing healthcare professionals to be able to address different hearing challenges in more diverse ways.
What are the important priorities that NAL is focused on in the coming year?
NAL is focused on exploring the emerging approaches to hearing healthcare, including the upcoming changes mentioned in the previous questions. Our goal is to provide insights and develop solutions with and for hearing healthcare partners. We have a history of co-developing and validating innovative technology for partners, and we foresee an urgent need for this given the emerging novel approaches to hearing technology, hearing services that includes teleaudiology and self-treatment, and channels for hearing healthcare delivery. We are also focused on engaging with thought leaders on the ways that people are changing in their listening behaviour, such as whether hearing loss (and hearing technology) affects people’s ability to communicate when videoconferencing on platforms such as Zoom.
If NAL had unlimited resources, what would it do first?
NAL would expand into an international virtual research conglomerate that allows the many amazing researchers from a variety of disciplines around the world to collaborate on the top research challenges facing hearing healthcare. We would also fund Grand Challenge competitions to get other researchers focused on the same hearing healthcare challenges that we are focused on at NAL. Combining NAL’s team of hearing healthcare experts and its ability to direct research towards high-impact solutions with the deep research and innovation talent that exists around the world would be amazing.
Read the NAL Annual Impact Report 2022.