Academy of Doctors of Audiology

Author: Stephanie Czuhajewski, CAE, Executive Director

ADA invites you to give back and give a hack! The 2017 Audiology Hackathon series will harness your creativity and channel your passion to develop the messages and models that will help patients and the profession succeed. So, turn on your computer and turn off any preconceived notions!

Here is how the Audiology Hackathon works—

1. Each Audiology Hackathon session will allow teams and individuals to contribute to solve a shared problem or achieve a shared goal over 72 hours.
2. There is no minimum time commitment, only the commitment to contribute your thoughts and ideas on topic. You may register for all sessions, or register for single sessions.
3. All of the tools and resources developed through the hackathon will be shared with the full audiology community and appropriate stakeholders. Our only objective is to create a crowdsourcing mechanism to help audiologists and patients succeed.
4. All sessions will be conducted remotely using whiteboard and video conferencing software.

Register at www.audiologist.org/hackathon (you may register individually, or register an entire team). Please mark your calendar for the following dates:

Audiology Hackathon Part 1: Messaging to Move the Masses
July 23rd-25th, 2017
Objective 1: To develop a public education/public awareness campaign to raise awareness about the importance of audiology, healthy hearing, and hearing health, and to deliver important information to the public regarding the importance of early intervention for hearing loss. Topics addressed will include developing messages and dissemination strategies to:

1. Encourage consumers to protect their hearing
2. Inform consumers about risks of untreated hearing loss
3. Encourage consumers to get an audiologic evaluation, if they suspect they have hearing loss
4. Encourage people to act to hear (to take action sooner to treat their hearing loss)
5. Reduce the stigma around hearing loss/use of hearing aids

Audiology Hackathon Part 2: Creating Common Hearing Health Metrics for Consumers
August 18th-20th
Objective 2: Consistent with recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, the second part of the Audiology Hackathon series will focus on the development of a consumer-based metric to enable individuals to understand and track their communication abilities and hearing needs, and to create a consumer-oriented format for disseminating the audiogram and other hearing test results to patients.

Audiology Hackathon Part 3: OTC and Me
September 15th-17th
Objective 3: During the final session, participants will develop a strategy and a step-by-step process for incorporating and marketing over-the-counter (OTC) and direct-to-consumer (DTC) amplification products in a private audiology practice. Include:

• Vendor management/procurement
• Pricing strategy metrics (not actual prices)
• Promotional strategy
• Product mix determination
• Retail/Medical model options

The 2017 Audiology Hackathon will bring audiologists, contributors from parallel professions, and other experts together for the purpose of addressing current challenges and opportunities in audiology, and to foster greater awareness and action around hearing health as a public health concern. Ideas generated from the hackathon will be compiled and shared for the benefit of the broader audiology community.

Please contact me at [email protected] for more information. I look forward to your participation in the 2017 Audiology Hackathon!