Decos reviewed by The Hearing Review

The Hearing Review recently had the opportunity to meet C. Jason Brown, vice president of sales and marketing for Decos Audiology USA, and ask him a few questions about the Decos audiometer.

 

HR: Can you give us some history about Decos Technology?

"Decos Technology is a 23-year-old software company that started in The Netherlands ... Our system has been actively marketed for a decade in and around The Netherlands, and we have achieved a staggering 93% market share in the clinical audiometer market there! We are very proud of our success and of our Decos audiometer, so we decided to take this state-of-the-art system to the global market. We now have systems in place in over 10 countries all across the world including the United States, England, Belgium, Germany, and India, and we are actively expanding into other countries as we speak."

 

HR: So what are the unique features of the audiometer?

"Decos Audiology is completely software-based. In fact, it is the only system of its kind in existence. The only external component to our system is a small distribution box called an AudioNigma® that allows for the use of seven transducers without having to move plugs. Because it is a completely software-based system, the Decos audiometer has unlimited flexibility and customization capability.

For example, we can use any sound you can imagine as stimulus or masking … all we need is for it to be in a digital format and we can handle the rest. We regularly design custom testing modules in support of university research projects, make programming and work-flow adjustments to accommodate individual customer needs, and customize print-out reports to match the customer's current report structure. Literally anything a clinician may want to do that involves sound-based testing can be done."

 

HR: It sounds a bit complex. Is it?

"No, not at all. We designed our system on a modular platform to make sure that, if someone only wants to conduct a basic audiogram, it can be done quickly and easily. We can basically adjust the complexity of our system to meet the needs of each facility. That is why we offer different packages designed to address different segments of the audiological market. We have customers ranging from rural hearing aid dispensers all the way up to research audiologists who are working on testing platforms for the next generation of medical advancements."

 

HR: What about electronic medical records and management?

"As a software company, we are actually more concerned about managing the test data both before and after the test. For example, many facilities use some sort of EMR/EHR system to manage patient data and medical records. As the world continues to move toward a paperless environment, medical professionals are more and more pressured to abandon paper audiograms. The audiology world has been painfully underserviced in this regard until now. Decos Audiology can actually import all of a patient's demographic data directly from the EMR/EHR system, thereby saving around 5 minutes per test and further eliminating the need to maintain paper patient files. Then, once the test is complete, we can export the test data directly back into that person's EMR/EHR profile."

 

HR: What do you see as limitations in the system?

"Some people ask us if our system actually has any  limitations. After some reflection, the only limitation we could come up with was that it can actually do too much! The transition from a manual system to our software-based system can be a little intimidating. To address that, we normally encourage people to take a 2-week "test-drive" of our system in their main testing booth. After using the system for that period of time, people normally don't want to give it back."

 

 

To read the whole article, visit The Hearing Review online.