With Listening 360, I tap into my multifaceted perspectives – patient, clinical, scientific, commercial, and musical – to probe how hearing healthcare can improve the lives of people who are deaf or have hearing loss.

Patient Perspective

Listening 360 explores my personal story as well as the overall consumer-patient journey with hearing loss and deafness.

I’ve worn hearing aids since age 12 for my genetic hearing loss. Since my loss is progressive, I’ve lived through many stages from mild, high-frequency up to my current loss of moderately-severe, only a few steps away from deafness.

My consultancy, Auditory Insight, has mapped the patient journey for companies in hearing aids, cochlear implants, and gene and drug therapy. Our expertise in the patient journey with hearing loss is unmatched.

Clinical Perspective

Listening 360 delves into the experiences of clinicians who treat hearing loss and how their practices influence the patient journey.

I’ve long been fascinated by comparing the experiences of clinicians and patients to understand the full picture of treatment.

Many of our engagements at Auditory Insight elicit needs from audiologists, ENTs, and neurotologists for product or clinical trial design.

Scientific and R&D Perspective

Listening 360 highlights advances in science as well as research and development that have the potential to improve patient outcomes and clinician experiences.

I’m interested in evaluating new advances in terms of their power to improve the lives of patients and to enhance clinicians’ armamentariums.

At Auditory Insight, we often serve as a bridge between companies’ centers of innovation and their markets. For gene and drug therapies, for example, we have evaluated clinicians’ likelihood of recommending and patients’ likelihood of adopting these proposed therapies.

Commercial Perspective

Listening 360 investigates the market potential of new treatments for hard-of-hearing and deaf people through devices or therapies.

As a person with lifelong hearing loss, I am deeply interested in how research and development can be effectively commercialized to improve the quality of life for people who seek to hear better.

Foundational to this interest are my decades of work in bringing new healthcare products and services to market. At Auditory Insight, for example, we recently advised a global company entering the US OTC hearing aid market with a new form factor on their go-to-market strategy.

Musical Perspective

Finally, Listening 360 examines the challenges of listening to and making music for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

I have a keen interest in the unique barriers that music lovers and musicians with hearing difficulties face in their journey, especially when they use their devices to listen to or play music.

An amateur classical pianist, I debuted in 2012 at a masterclass recital at Carnegie Hall wearing my hearing aids. I perform as an act of service, including my current weekly shift at the Connecticut Hospice. My intense enjoyment of classical piano music gives me an enhanced understanding of the nature of sound.

All Perspectives Covered

Sociology, medicine, science, economics, and music: all of these disciplines need to be considered to help hearing healthcare continue to advance in the 21st century.

The quality of life available to people with hearing loss and deafness depend on all of us embracing the full perspective.