LiDIA – the affordable, compact hearing screening and amplification tool developed by the Department of Audiology – has reached a significant milestone: widespread real-world deployment. Over the past year, LiDIA (Listening, Identification, and Immediate Amplification) has been integrated into clinical workflows at multiple sites, including primary care practices, geriatrics clinics, visiting nurse programs, and hospital admissions departments. The team just received news that the patent filed related to LiDIA has been awarded.
When patients are admitted and have their vitals taken, hearing screening is now included. Patients count how many beeps they hear. If they do not hear as many as they should, they keep the headset on, and it becomes an amplifier.
Feedback from clinical sites this year has been consistently positive about how straightforward LiDIA is to integrate into existing workflows in both inpatient and outpatient settings. The design intention behind LiDIA was to make hearing screening simple enough that it could happen routinely wherever patients are seen, and that vision is being realized.
The next step is to compare traditional hearing screening methods – where clinicians simply ask, “How’s your hearing?” – to LiDIA’s objective screening approach in a clinical effectiveness trial.