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Facing up to the challenge of behavioural observation in infant hearing assessment

The ability to assess detection and discrimination of speech by infants has proved elusive. Dr Iain Jackson and colleagues discuss how new technologies and fresh approaches might offer valuable insight into young infants’ behavioural responses to sound. The limits of...

Hearing care systems in Europe – can we do more?

52 million Europeans experience hearing loss but many don’t find their way to professional hearing care. Lidia Best looks at strategies to improve the uptake of amplification at a national level [1]. With rising numbers of people experiencing hearing loss,...

In conversation with Shelly Chadha 2019

Shelly Chadha works at the World Health Organisation as the Medical Officer for ear and hearing care. Here, Alex Griffiths-Brown interviews her to find out more about her career, challenges she’s faced and her ambitions for the future. Shelly Chadha....

Developments in diagnostic approaches for acutely dizzy patients

The acutely dizzy patient can be a diagnostic and management dilemma for emergency departments and general practitioners, with many patients consequently having delayed access to specialised assessment and treatment. David Jay tells us about HINTS, a bedside test that can...

The power of the multidisciplinary team in paediatric cochlear implant assessment

Marette, Kate and Justine from the Birmingham Paediatric Centre give a detailed insight into how their team works together to assess children and young people for potential cochlear implantation. Cochlear implants and the specialist MDT The multidisciplinary team in cochlear...

Cognition and hearing – you can’t test one with the other!

Cognitive Psychologist, Boaz M Ben-David, provides insights into the import of considering cognitive factors when assessing speech perception ability to maximise intervention success. Failing to do so, he suggests, is “ageist”, a predisposition healthcare professionals must avoid. Cognitive performance is...

Mobile technologies to support global ear and hearing care

By combining mobile technology with artificial intelligence, more people can access ear and hearing care. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that worldwide, nearly half a billion people have moderate or worse hearing loss [1]. The vast majority of people...

Promoting human rights of deaf communities in low-resource settings

Stigma and misconceptions about deafness are serious impediments for many deaf people to realise rights and potential in some of the most challenging situations globally. Around 430 million people are estimated to live with moderate or higher levels of hearing...

Hearables: in-ear sensing devices for recording of physiological signals

Colver Ken Howe Ne, Jameel Muzaffar and Manohar Bance discuss the potential of hearable systems to monitor physiological signals (e.g. from brain or heart, blood pressure, body temperature) unobtrusively. Such adaptations require high-quality sensors and sophisticated de-noising signal processing on...