SNHL and Soundbites

Course Information

Until recently there was no way to influence progressive hearing loss caused by the biological decline of inner ear hair cell function. The advent of Soundbites is changing that. Soundbites, known as ACEMg in medical journals, is a safe neuroprotectant biomedicine for hearing preservation developed at the University of Michigan Medical School, supported for three decades by government grants from the U.S. NIH and the European Commission on Health Innovation.

Soundbites is a brand new idea for hearing preservation, designed for daily use, available to the general public without a prescription as softgel capsules for teens and adults, and twist-off softgels for children.

What will I learn?

• Session 1: Overview (.1 CEU) – Summary of the SNHL problem and thirty-six-year ACEMg medical R&D story, ending with a summary of the objective real-world clinical data demonstrating ACEMg’s evidence of effectiveness;
• Session 2: The SNHL Problem (.1 CEU): The SNHL problem in detail, from major cause and common belief; the problem’s scale and consequences, to who suffers and how using global public health data;
• Session 3: How Sound Becomes Hearing (.1 CEU): Anatomy, physiology, and inner ear biochemistry;
• Session 4: When Auditory Transduction Goes Wrong (.2 CEU) – The pathogenesis and pathophysiology of SNHL, how the ACEMg formula emerged from basic auditory neuroscience research, and how ACEMg works – its mechanisms of action; preclinical and clinical data;
• Session 5, ACEMg becomes Soundbites (.1 CEU) – The translational medical research process, and ACEMg’s sixteen-year journey through it, from laboratory to product to market.

What is the course structure and grading policy?

The course is online, sequential, self-directed, and self-scored. Sessions 1 through 4 include a quiz that must be passed with 70% or better to proceed to the following session. Session 5 ends with a course evaluation which must be completed to obtain certification.

Learners must watch each full video, then take and pass each quiz before proceeding to the next session. Learners see the correct answers to each question after responding and clicking “check”. You may repeat each quiz as often as needed.

Why should I consider taking the course?

The course is offered to clinical audiologists who want a comprehensive SNHL learning experience, including its biochemistry, pathogenesis, pathophysiology, and a detailed understanding of the end-to-end ACEMg R&D translational medicine research journey aimed at addressing it.

Clinical audiologists who complete the course are certified to offer Soundbites to patients. Audiologists who conduct OAE examinations may consider participating in the ACEMg (Soundbites) epidemiological study.

What do I get from taking the course?

1. Differentiate your practice by providing a higher standard of care, offering your patients the first clinically proven preventive care therapeutic for hearing, which may also impact cognitive health and tinnitus.
   
2. Encouraging a preventive care routine for hearing motivates your patients to schedule regular check-ups.
   
3. Your certified practice will be listed on keephearing.org and soundbites.com, generating awareness and new patient inquiries at no cost.

Conflict of Interest Acknowledgement

Keep Hearing Impact Director Barry Seifer is the course presenter. ACEMg is sold under the Soundbites brand by Soundbites Public Benefit Corporation. Mr. Seifer is a founder of Soundbites PBC and owns a minority of its shares. Keep Hearing is the Soundbites PBC nonprofit partner for research, education, and equitable access. Soundbites PBC is the major donor to the Keep Hearing initiative.

Who offers the course?

The Keep Hearing initiative nonprofit (Keep Hearing) is approved by the American Academy of Audiology to offer Academy CEUs for this activity. The program is worth a maximum of .6 CEUs. Academy approval of this continuing education activity is based on course content only and does not imply endorsement of course content, specific products, or clinical procedure, or adherence of the event to the Academy’s Code of Ethics. Any views that are presented are those of the presenter/CE Provider and not necessarily of the American Academy of Audiology.

Instructor Biography

Barry Seifer (b.1950) is a founder and the Impact Director of Keep Hearing 501c3 nonprofit, and a founder, CEO, and a member of the board of directors of Soundbites Public Benefit Corporation (PBC).

Soundbites PBC holds the exclusive patent license to the ACEMg hearing preservation biomedicine developed by Josef M. Miller Ph.D. (1937 – 2017) during his tenure at the University of Michigan Medical School. Barry has led ACEMg translational research and commercialization since 2010 when he joined Dr. Miller as CEO to bring Dr. Miller’s ACEMg invention out of his laboratory and into the market.

From 2012 through 2016 he was a Principal Investigator and a member of the Steering Committee on the European government medical innovation grant to the ACEMg translational research consortium, responsible for clinical medicine product development, commercial strategy, and patent prosecution.

He is a co-inventor on several of nine issued ACEMg patents, and a co-inventor on the tenth patent application based on analysis of clinical data from the two-year real-world study demonstrating that ACEMg preserved or improved hearing for 75% of patients.

As Impact Director of the Keep Hearing nonprofit, Barry is focused on helping fulfill Dr. Miller’s lifelong vision to measurably reduce the personal, social and economic burdens of hearing loss.

He earned his B.A. from UC Berkeley in philosophy, and his M.F.A. in design from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London, since 2007.