January 15, 2010

I made really good time getting to Dr. Hersh’s office in Forest Hills from Shelter Island.  After being on the first ferry leaving the island at 5:40am, I was on 108^th Street by 7:35am.  It gave me enough time to go to TD bank before going to his office.  Normally I have to park about a half mile from the office, but I was thrilled to find a parking spot right on 72^nd Ave!  It was a light day at his office; I did a total of 4 hearing tests.  Unfortunately, the last patient didn’t show until 12:07pm, and consequently I was not able to leave until 12:30pm.  Luckily, I made great time going back out east.  I had time to stop at Bank of America in Shirley to deposit my secretary’s checks for her (she was recovering from tonsil surgery on 1/11).  I just made it back to the office by 2:01pm for my 2:00pm patient.  Maria was back into the office because her hearing aid was set too high.  Thankfully she told me to set it where I thought it should be.  I reset the fitting to acclimization level 1 (she wears an Oticon Dual M5 receiver-in-the ear hearing device in her right ear) and enabled the automatic adaptation controller.  The hearing device will gradually increase the output until it reaches level 2 in 30 days.  I informed Maria this would be the best way to gradually increase the gain without her getting an adverse reaction.  After Maria left, I did some clerical work (Maggie was working from home and my secretary was out), then set up Persona Medical’s hearing aid software in my ‘house call laptop’.  I invested in their Speech Pro package which was really an excellent one.  Persona gets you a MedRx Avant real ear system (which only works with Persona Medical hearing aids unless you purchase a firmware upgrade from MedRx) and a pair of powered Logitech speakers.  The best part about the Avant system is it’s binaural real ear measurement and the probe microphone setup is far superior to the system I purchased from MedRx back in 2006 (Digital Speech Mapping).  What I like about the Avant system is that you have binaural probe microphone assemblies. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the sound card on the laptop but I was relieved when I learned that the MedRx box has its own separate sound drivers.   I also purchased a pair of Persona Medical’s Evok 900 behind-the-ear hearing aids.  These aids are their top of the line model, and I had a chance to have their software demonstrated to me by allowing Michael Steinman (inside sales) remote access to my computer.  He had me actually put the probe tubes in both ears and couple the BTEs to foam molds.  I remember just how uncomfortable having the real ear probe hit your tympanic membrane is!  I programmed a moderate flat loss and Steinman fit the hearing aids with Speech Pro.  This is a revolutionary system where you can use either composite speech waited noise or real live speech as a stimulus and you can have the software automatically program the hearing aid to within 3dB of target!  Steinman was also able to demonstrate the difference in sound quality of real ear verified versus predictive.  It’s amazing that there was a clear difference.  The real ear verified was more natural; the predicted was tinnier.  This entire process took a little longer than expected, but I’m really excited about being able to fit their product on some of my prospective patients.  I am really looking forward to when they are able to introduce connectivity to BlueTooth devices as a feature of their product.  In the meantime, I look forward to using their amazing software on some of my patients to see what they think.