Jabra Enhance: Committed to audiology

At Jabra Enhance, our commitment to audiology and professional service runs deep: Not only are we advised by some of the top audiologists in the world, but we make sure each and every Enhance Select Premium Package client has the opportunity to meet face-to-face with a licensed audiologist or hearing specialist.

However, we realize some may have questions about us and our use of technology for hearing assessments and remote face-to-face care. We've created this page to help provide clarification and background to the professional community.

The science of online hearing tests

Thanks to significant technological advancements and research over the past few years, it is possible to achieve a successful hearing aid fitting with an online hearing test (McCaslin 2017; Whitton et al. 2016).

Building on this work, we've done a considerable amount of testing on a wide-range of devices and headphones, and have developed our own online hearing assessment based on what we've learned. Given our testing across different transducers and operating systems, we're confident that when augmented with face-to-face professional support and ongoing remote tunings by a licensed Jabra Enhance hearing specialist our test enables us to effectively fit a hearing aid and improve a client's hearing. Our approach has proven well-founded, as we've consistently received excellent clinical outcomes and customer satisfaction scores.

Of course, providing effective hearing care extends beyond a customer's online hearing test and initial fitting. For Premium Package customers, our Audiology Team team uses the Client Oriented Scale of Improvement (COSI) in follow-up appointments to determine if the customer is seeing improvement and is having their specific hearing needs and goals addressed.

Focusing on accessibility

Hearing care has an accessibility problem. In fact, 70-85% of adults 50+ with hearing loss do not receive the care they need.

We're committed to changing this. At Jabra Enhance, we use video and other telehealth technologies including online hearing assessments to make medical-grade hearing aids available to more people. Recent studies have shown that approaches like ours are effective at making hearing care more accessible (Krumm 2016).

While Jabra Enhance can help increase the accessibility of hearing care, there will always be a need for in-person audiology practices. Some clients will opt for in-person care, or will need access to procedures such as otoscopy, probe-microphone measures, and advanced diagnostic testing. For these reasons, Jabra Enhance was designed to augment, not replace the in-person care model — to provide an alternative for many who can't conveniently access in-person care or prefer a different experience. We will always let you know if we believe it is important that you be seen in person by another qualified professional.

The highest standards

We're committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations related to online hearing aid dispensing and our legal team works closely with our Board of Advisors and company executives to ensure Jabra Enhance always upholds the highest standards of the industry.

Come grow with us

If you're a licensed audiologist or hearing aid dispenser and want to help Jabra Enhance make hearing aids and professional care more accessible, let us know. Qualified, caring, and passionate professionals are always welcome on our team!

Frequently asked questions

  • As a result of considerable tele-audiology research in recent years (Swanepoel et al. 2010; Krumm 2016), remote hearing assessment and hearing aid fitting is now recognized as an evidence-based approach for providing hearing services to more people who need them. For resources supporting this shift in professional opinion, you might want to read two editorials in the Journal of the American Academy of Audiology - one in the June 2016 issue entitled "Perceptions of Internet Delivery of Hearing aids" (Jacobson 2016) and the other, published in February 2017 entitled "Build a better assessment and patients will beat a path to your clinic" (McCaslin 2017). You may also want to read a systematic review entitled "Efficacy of Remote Hearing Aids Programming Using Teleaudiology" (Ba Mashmous 2022).

  • Yes. Audiologists were involved from the outset in the development of the Jabra Enhance approach for hearing assessment and hearing aid fitting. These leaders in the profession still provide expert advice on the entire process. In addition, our licensed audiologists and hearing aid dispensers are in close contact with people who choose the Enhance Select package with professional care for their hearing aid needs, beginning with the initial orientation and continuing throughout long-term follow up.

  • We understand the question because in-person audiologists and hearing aid dispensers typically perform an inspection of the patient's external ear canals before beginning hearing assessment. But the FDA has made clear that hearing aids sold under the new "over-the-counter" regulations, like Enhance Select, do not require any examination. Even so, Jabra Enhance takes several steps to address the issue of ear canal status. Customers who opt for professional care with our Premium Package are directed to complete the Consumer Ear Disease Risk Assessment, or CEDRA. The National Institutes of Health funded research on this validated 15-item consumer questionnaire to detect disease risk before a person purchases hearing aids. These customers are also specifically asked about past problems with excessive cerumen in their orientation with a licensed Jabra Enhance hearing specialist. Persons with such a history are encouraged to seek medical consultation.

  • No. Children or anyone under the age of 18 years should seek hearing health care directly from a licensed audiologist or other qualified provider. Jabra Enhance is for adults 18 and older with self-perceived mild to moderate hearing loss only.

  • Research from around the world confirms that pure tone hearing screening and assessment conducted online, or even with a smartphone, can yield results comparable to the conventional hearing assessment conducted by a hearing professional with the patient in a sound-treated room (Whitton et al. 2016; Hazan et al. 2022). You can find more information with a PubMed literature search at www.nlm.nih.gov. In fact, there is considerable research validating remote assessment of speech perception in quiet and noise (de Graaffe et al. 2018; Paplialonga et al. 2018).

    It is important to note that the tests patients receive at an audiologist's office are designed not only to measure how well they hear, but also to identify any conditions that may require medical intervention, something the FDA has determined is not typically a necessary step when purchasing over-the-counter hearing aids such as Enhance Select.

    Our test is designed only to indicate if a prospective customer may be an appropriate candidate for our hearing aids, and if they purchase our Premium Package, to provide us enough information to create their personal hearing profile and initially program their hearing devices. Our test does not diagnose hearing loss or any other disease or condition. However, if results suggest any medical conditions beyond common hearing loss, we may advise customers to seek further care.

  • As mentioned above, strategies for hearing assessment and rehabilitation of hearing loss are rapidly changing. Telehealth has been shown to be an effective tool to deliver services and care in a more convenient and accessible manner. Many hearing aid-related services a professional can perform in a traditional clinical setting can now be done remotely using the kind of technology and techniques used by Jabra Enhance. Outcome research within the past decade confirms that hearing aid-related services delivered via technologically remote means can produce patient benefits equivalent to what we would expect for traditional face-to-face clinical services that are consistent with best practices (e.g. Tao et al. 2021; Ba Mashmous 2022; Hazan et al. 2022). So we can provide effective professional support via telehealth for our customers who choose to take advantage of it.

  • While probe-microphone verification represents an in-person audiologic best practice, technological developments such as adaptation algorithms, face-to-face follow-up sessions and the ability to remotely fine-tune the full suite of hearing aid features has yielded excellent client outcomes.

  • On the contrary, the Jabra Enhance model expands and extends the availability of high quality hearing aids and professional services to more patients, and reinforces our belief that the involvement of a qualified professional helps achieve the best benefit, value, and performance from hearing aids. People with hearing loss and difficulties with communication now have different options for seeking hearing health care. These people value, and in many cases require, convenience, access, and cost-effectiveness as they attempt to find a solution to their communication problems. The increased public interest in OTC products is evidence for this trend. Jabra Enhance offers an attractive professionally-focused option for adults who have hearing loss and who have decided it's time to do something about it and want professional support but aren't well-served by a process requiring numerous in-person visits.

Ba Mashmous, M.H.A. (2022) Efficacy of Remote HearingAids Programming Using Teleaudiology: ASystematic Review. E-Health TelecommunicationSystems and Networks , 11, 14-33. https://doi.org/10.4236/etsn.2022.111002

de Graaff, F., Huysmans, E., Merkus, P., Theo Goverts, S., & Smits, C. (2018). Assessment of speech recognition abilities in quiet and in noise: a comparison between self-administered home testing and testing in the clinic for adult cochlear implant users. International journal of audiology, 57(11), 872—880. https://doi.org/10.1080/14992027.2018.1506168

Hazan, A., Luberadzka, J., Rivilla, J., Snik, A., Albers, B., Méndez, N., Wack, N., Paytuvi, O., Zarowski, A., Offeciers, E., & Kinsbergen, J. (2022). Home-Based Audiometry With a Smartphone App: Reliable Results?. American journal of audiology, 31(3S), 914—922. https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_AJA-21-00191

Jacobson G. P. (2016). Perceptions of Internet Delivery of Hearing Aids. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 27(6), 424. https://doi.org/10.3766/jaaa.27.6.1

Krumm, Mark (2016) A Review Of Contemporary Tele-audiology Literature. Journal of Hearing Science 2016 Vol. 6 · No. 3.

McCaslin, Devin L. (2017) Editorial: Build a Better Hearing Assessment and the Patients Will Beat a Path to Your Clinic. Journal of the American Academy of Audiologists DOI: 10.3766/jaaa.28.2.1

Paglialonga, A., Cleveland Nielsen, A., Ingo, E., Barr, C., & Laplante-Lévesque, A. (2018). eHealth and the hearing aid adult patient journey: a state-of-the-art review. Biomedical engineering online, 17(1), 101. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12938-018-0531-3

Swanepoel, deW., & Hall, J. W., 3rd (2010). A systematic review of telehealth applications in audiology. Telemedicine journal and e-health : the official journal of the American Telemedicine Association, 16(2), 181—200. https://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2009.0111

Tao, K. F. M., Moreira, T. C., Jayakody, D. M. P., Swanepoel, W., Brennan-Jones, C. G., Coetzee, L., & Eikelboom, R. H. (2021). Teleaudiology hearing aid fitting follow-up consultations for adults: single blinded crossover randomised control trial and cohort studies. International Journal of Audiology, 60(sup1), S49—S60. https://doi.org/10.1080/14992027.2020.1805804

Whitton JP, Hancock KE, Shannon JM, Polley DB. (2016) Validation of a self-administered audiometry application: an equivalence study. Laryngoscope 126 (10): 2382 - 2388.