Congratulations to Dr. Jennifer Tufts on her recent award from the DOD/Defense Health Agency/Edare for her project on Multi-User, Reliable Hearing Protection Fit Test System with Integrated Education. This award is a Phase II SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research), which focuses on stimulating technological innovation.

This project aims to improve the process of fit-testing hearing protection for military personnel by developing a multi-user tablet-based fit-testing system. The goal is to make the fit-testing system user-friendly enough that multiple individuals can be fit for hearing protection at once, with only a single test administrator needed.

The second part of the project will evaluate the effectiveness of a brief educational sequence provided to individuals who do not reach a target level of protection after being fit-tested. One group will view the educational sequence before retrying the fit test. Another group will simply retry with no additional training. If the results show that additional education improves outcomes, the educational sequence will become a part of the multi-user fit testing system.