News / Press Releases

The majority of older adults with mild hearing loss are unaware of it, a startling fact that can have an impact on a person’s wellbeing. The social and health consequences related to hearing loss are many including fatigue, anxiety, social isolation, depression and dementia.

The idea first came to Dr. Matthew Bromwich while on his annual visit to treat children in Iqaluit. Many of the patients the CHEO ear, nose and throat specialist and surgeon saw in the North — where children suffer hearing loss at three times the national average — needed hearing tests. That often meant flying them and their families down to Ottawa because no audiologist was available in Iqaluit.

There are a number of traditional marketing channels that audiologists have used and continue to use to generate traffic for their clinics. These include online marketing, email marketing, the utility of a website, blogs, and testimonials to offer credibility and education to the consumer.

Clearwater Clinical Limited announced that the company has received CE Mark Approval -- signifier that products sold in the European Economic Area (EEA) have been assessed to meet safety and other protection requirements—for SHOEBOX Audiometry in Europe as an audiometer intended for diagnosis of human hearing loss. SHOEBOX, according to Clearwater, is reportedly “the world’s first CE-Marked” iPad-based audiometer.

Outreach work comes with many challenges, not the least of which is transportation of medical equipment. As an ENT surgeon, I travel with a portable audiometer. Typically, this device is a donated, tabletop, wired suitcase device with a handle.

Like most clinical tests, audiometry produces only a snapshot of a single point in time. For that single moment, you know the truth, but only for that one moment.  Unfortunately, many diseases are either fluctuating or progressive in nature and these snapshots can be misleading and must therefore be understood in a broader clinical context.

A new, simple technology is allowing Iqaluit doctors to better diagnose ear infections and hearing loss — an issue that affects children in Nunavut at a rate far higher than the rest of Canada.

Mike Weider is always looking for the next big idea. The software entrepreneur from Collingwood, Ont., has sold two startup companies, sits on the board of four others, advises two venture funds and is an active angel investor. So when a colleague introduced him to Ottawa ear, nose and throat physician Dr. Matt Bromwich, who had invented a mobile audiometer called Shoebox Audiometry that increases early detection of hearing-related conditions, he wanted in.