Press

I liked Audicus’s customer service and responsiveness immediately...The result of my Audicus hearing test was virtually identical to the one I had had done at Costco...I’m glad I didn’t wait any longer.

The online hearing test is just one aspect of Audicus, a startup that makes hearing aids more accessible and affordable. Freuler launched the company in 2012 after noticing a gap in the industry.

Patrick Freuler, founder and chief executive of the hearing aid company Audicus, went into business after being confronted with prices and inefficiencies that seemed out of step with today's technology-driven, consumer-oriented world...Audicus, based in Chelsea, is part of a wave of companies capitalizing on the shift toward what Freuler calls DIY diagnostics. Anyone with a mobile phone can track their blood-glucose levels, take a vision exam or even attempt to self-diagnose a skin condition. Why not take a hearing test?

Audicus is selling simple and affordable, German-manufactured hearing aids. It is one of the first startups that offers an Online Hearing Test that is accurate enough to program your hearing aids, which eliminates the need to seek a clinical audiogram. This direct-to-consumer startup radically reduces hearing aid costs and ensures that hearing aids are customized and tailored to the client’s requirements.

Hearing aids that are sold at an audiologists office are expensive, and usually range from $1,000 to $4,000 per ear. They are often sometimes not covered by private insurance or traditional Medicare.

The cost to manufacture a single hearing aid — not including fees for testing and programming and other services — is only $50 to $200, said Freuler. "I think at some point, what will happen [is that] we will make the market bigger, because we will attract people who will not go to the audiologist because it is so expensive," Freuler said.

Perhaps the closest thing to “a fashionable hearing aid” happened in 2015, when Audicus partnered with Advanced Style for a line of devices in leopard print, glitter, polka dots, and hologram. They’re actually really cool — and the campaign video, starring the impossibly glamorous Joyce Carpati, is serving very good octogenarian style icon vibes.

The Audicus web-based hearing test provides a national solution to this by providing free tests and education tools to the greater population, upending antiquated testing methods.

Audicus’s new hearing assessment tech will allow users to check up on their hearing online, for free. It’s a great first stop for anyone concerned about their hearing.

Ultimately, Audicus is all about bringing people together by taking a consumer-based focus to their branding. Patrick also shares how they aim to educate their consumers to take healthcare decisions into their own hands to have a drastic improvement in their quality of life.