What is HearHub?
HearHub is a world first online platform which provides hearing healthcare professionals with cutting-edge tools and programs to enhance how they work with children with hearing loss. The platform is home to a selection of innovative and unique online tools designed to help professionals deliver the best possible support for children with hearing loss or listening issues around the world. This support will transform their lives and ensure that they reach their full potential despite the challenges of their disability.
Powered by the Shepherd Centre
As a world-leader in providing early intervention listening and spoken language therapy, The Shepherd Centre has been helping children with hearing loss reach their potential for more than 50 years. The Early Intervention System implemented at The Shepherd Centre is grounded in the principles of Listening and Spoken Language (LSL) therapy and incorporates audiology, counselling and early childhood education. Children completing this evidence-based family-friendly system develop language skills equal to or better than their typical-hearing peers. This empowers them to overcome the disadvantages of their disability, and reach their full social, educational and economic potential”. Through HearHub, The Shepherd Centre is providing digital access to these innovative tools and programs to hearing healthcare professionals across the globe.
The HearHub Value
HearHub’s industry-leading digital tools are user-friendly and designed to track and monitor a child’s listening skills and identify focus areas. Suitable for use with children with all levels and types of hearing loss, from all language backgrounds.
HearHub’s digital resources enable professionals to:
- Visually follow the development of a child’s skills from birth
- Track a child’s access to the sounds around them to guide intervention decisions
- Educate families on how to support their child at home
- Deliver ground-breaking parent and child education programs specifically developed for children with hearing loss
- Empower children to develop confident social skills
- Use data insights to individualise a child’s learning goals
- Share progress and information with parents and professionals
- Access the platform from any location
The first phase of HearHub offers 2 clinical tools and 2 courses:
- REDDI tool – The Rapid Evaluation and Documentation of Detection and Imitation tool provides a daily picture of a child’s access to the sounds around them
- FLI-P® tool – Functional Listening Index – Paediatric® tool tracks the development of a child’s functional listening skills over time and provides insights into the formation of key listening skills
- Talk Together course- A holistic training package to enable professionals to deliver a series of courses for families
- Confident Kids course – empowers children with hearing loss to navigate different social environments by teaching them practical strategies for building healthy relationships
The Need for HearHub
Hearing loss remains the most common disability diagnosed at birth, affecting 1 in 1,000 newborns. The incidence rises to 1 in 300 by school age (due to acquired hearing loss). (Source: First Voice Report, 2014).
In the broader community, hearing loss is often assumed to be a straightforward ‘practical’ problem, ie. The individual is simply unable to naturally hear at a typical standard, and hearing aids or other devices will solve the problem.
This assumption is incorrect. Hearing devices are an important but imperfect solution, and pose significant challenges of their own for a child’s hearing (eg. The amplification of background noise).
A child with typical hearing learns basic spoken language and interpersonal skills through passive listening from a young age. In a child with hearing loss, this ability to listen is impaired, even with the aid of a hearing device. This can mean a significant delay in the development of age-appropriate speech, social skills and resilience.
Without early clinical intervention, these challenges can be lifelong. They will have a detrimental impact on educational outcomes, employability, social inclusion, relationships, and emotional health. As a result, these individuals often experience social and economic vulnerability, and marginalisation from the community.
Across Australia, over 50% of hearing-impaired children do not receive the specialist therapies they need to overcome the challenges of their disability. (Sources: Hearing Australia, 2014 and 2018 First Voice Report, The Alexander Graham Bell Academy)
Internationally, there are 34.1 million children across the globe with a disabling hearing loss. The vast majority of these children miss out on specialist intervention, even in developed nations, leading to lifelong disadvantage. (Source: World Health Organisation).
Our projections show that ‘HearHub’ has the potential to reach 17,205 clinicians and benefit approximately 340,000 children within five years, including 9,000 children within Australia.
The target markets for ‘HearHub’ are professionals working in:
- Clinics supporting children with hearing loss.
- Clinicians in Early intervention (EI) clinics.
- Early childhood centres supporting children with listening and/or social skills challenges.
- Educators in early childhood centres
- Clinicians in Early intervention clinics not specialising in hearing loss.
The initial target geographies for ‘HearHub’ are developed countries with English as a primary language:
- USA (327 million people, 70% of target total)
- UK (66 million people, 14% of target total)
- Canada (37 million people, 8% of target total)
- Australia (25 million people, 5% of target total)
- Ireland (5 million people, 1% of target total)
- New Zealand (5 million people, 1% of target total)
Total population of target countries: 464 million.
HearHub is a completely unique initiative, with no market competition. We have had significant interest from organisations on three continents, who have agreed to partner with us on piloting and user-testing the platform: Royal Far West (Australia), the First Voice Alliance (Australia and international), The Hearing House (NZ), Shizuoka Prefectural General Hospital (Japan), University of North Carolina (US). Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and all stakeholders have affirmed that this is a much-needed and game-changing initiative
HearHub will ensure that hearing-impaired children can receive world-class clinical support regardless of their location, equipping them for the skills they need to overcome the challenges of their disability and thrive as productive and involved members of their communities. This will dramatically reduce levels of disadvantage and exclusion, and thus lead to transformative social and economic benefits at both an individual and societal level.
