Delivering health care remotely has evolved over many years for a wide range of health services. The 2019 Roadmap to Hearing Health, building on earlier Parliamentary and other reports, identified the potential of teleaudiology to address inequitable access to hearing services for people living in rural and remote parts of Australia.
The COVID-19 pandemic increased the level of interest in and take up of teleaudiology to support Australians’ hearing health during lockdowns, travel restrictions and temporary business closures.
The Teleaudiology Guidelines will help improve models of care for people who need hearing care and ensure the consistency of quality services across Australia.
As the Ida Institute reported in 2021, “…the hearing care of the future is not location specific…and, in most cases, care will be a hybrid of in-person and remote” [Future Hearing Journeys, 2021].