Nuance Audio glasses – a Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) registered medical device – is gaining traction in Australia among people with mild to moderate hearing loss who until now have been told, repeatedly, that they do not have a problem worth treating.
That group is far larger than most optometrists would assume. Of the 6.5 million Australians living with hearing loss, 5.86 million sit in the mild to moderate band.1 It’s the overwhelming majority and yet it is also the band that gets ignored. As EssilorLuxottica’s Director of Audiology for Australia and New Zealand, Naomi Nicolinas, put it, severe to profound loss “is always treated and acknowledged for obvious reasons, whereas a mild to moderate hearing loss is often ignored because… most people feel as though it’s something that they can live with”.
Dr Brent Edwards, Director at the National Acoustic Laboratories – a research centre funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health that has spent 80 years conducting research on hearing loss and hearing devices – argues that standard diagnostic measures simply miss these patients. “We talk a lot about this underserved group of people who have very mild losses such that hearing care professionals go, ‘Ah, you don’t have a problem’. But they do because they’re coming in for help. The measure of your hearing loss, the audiogram, is not a great indicator of need or a great indicator of benefit that you would get from a device,” he said. “The diagnostics are not sophisticated enough to tell everything about what’s happening with the human,” he said.
Dr Edwards said telling a patient they don’t need help, “is, I think, not patient-centred care”.
Vision and hearing… naturally belong together. They work in harmony in the brain
With the arrival of Nuance Audio Glasses, he said, “we’re flipping it on the head and saying, ‘Even if you have mild loss, we can help you.’” This, he said, results in “essentially being able to address an underserved population… people who want help but no one’s paying attention”.
Difficulties with hearing, particularly in noisy environments, are among the most common and undertreated sensory challenges in adults.1,2 Even people with mild or minimal hearing loss often experience substantial difficulty understanding speech in complex acoustic scenarios, such as restaurants, workplaces or social gatherings.3,4
Ms Nicolinas explained that affected patients can typically hear that someone is speaking but cannot make out the words, “particularly… in noisy environments. So restaurants, cafes, family gatherings, and meetings”. From there, the unravelling is predictable. “Once communication becomes difficult, people often withdraw from social settings, conversations, as well as from activities that they once really loved and enjoyed doing,” she said. “This, over time, leads to issues with relationships, communications, and overall wellbeing.”
Research confirms that left untreated, hearing loss can be linked to social withdrawal, reduced quality of life, increased cognitive load, social isolation, and increased risk of depression.4-7
Stigma, more than cost or access, is often what deters patients from seeking out hearing aids. Ms Nicolinas noted that despite a market full of options, “we see millions of people walking around with an untreated hearing loss”, held back by denial and by the associations that cling to conventional devices.
Nuance Audio’s pitch is to sidestep that entirely by hiding the technology inside an ordinary pair of glasses – a directional, beam-forming microphone array at the front, with low-latency processing, and discreet open-ear speakers in the temples.
For Dr Edwards, it’s a solution that is remarkably logical. “Vision and hearing… naturally belong together. They work in harmony in the brain and we work together to use our vision and our hearing to understand the world around us,” he said. “But EssilorLuxottica may be the first company that has recognised that and said, ‘let’s help both at the same time’.”
Acknowledging that “generally speaking in healthcare, there can be a reluctance to adopt new categories of products”, he commended EssilorLuxottica’s strategic initiative in bringing optometry and audiology together. This he said, creates a “channel that they have a little bit more control over… as opposed to just putting the glasses in an audiology clinic with no optometrists around or vice versa”.
References
- World Health Organization. World report on hearing. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2021.
- Wilson BS, Tucci DL, Merson MH, O’Donoghue GM. Global hearing health care: New findings and perspectives. Lancet. 2017;390(10111):2503-2515. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)31073-5.
- Tremblay KL, Pinto A, Zhang Y. Listening effort and hearing loss: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence. Ear Hear. 2021;42(6):1533–1545.
- Lin FR, Yaffe K, Simonsick EM, et al. Hearing loss and cognitive decline in older adults. JAMA Intern Med. 2013;173(4):293-299. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.1868.
- Peelle JE, Wingfield A. The neural consequences of age -related hearing loss. Trends Neurosci. 2016;39(7):486-497. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2016.05.001.
- Li CM, Zhang X, Wilson MR, et al. Hearing impairment associated with depression in US adults, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005 -2010. JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2014;140(4):293-302. doi: 10.1001/jamaoto.2014.42.
- Shukla A, Harper M, Reed NS, et al. Hearing loss, loneliness, and social isolation: a systematic review. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2020;162(5):622 –633. doi: 10.1177/0194599820910377.
