Sound Scouts Wins Health and Wearable Technology Award at 2017 SXSW Accelerator

Australian Health Tech company Sound Scouts is pleased to announce that its innovative hearing app won the Health and Wearable Technology Award at the 2017 SXSW Accelerator competition in Austin, Texas.

The SXSW Accelerator pitch event showcases the most ambitious tech start-up talent from around the world. This year was the ninth annual event, with over 500 companies applying from around the world to compete — only around 10% were selected as pitch finalists across ten categories.

SXSW history has proven that winners and finalists alike go on to become household names. Siri won in 2010, Pinterest in 2012. Sound Scouts competed in the Health and Wearables Technologies category against an international field.

Founder of Sound Scouts, Carolyn Mee said:

“We’re thrilled that Sound Scouts has achieved international recognition for its advanced technology but also for the positive social impact it can have. We want to make sure that every child has their hearing tested around the time that they start school. Many people think that because their child’s hearing was tested when they were a baby that their child can’t have a hearing problem. But hearing loss can occur at any time. We know that more children are identified as having hearing loss in the first few years of school than are identified at birth. Too often kids can go through years of schooling before someone thinks to test their hearing. By that time, they’re often labelled as ‘disruptive’ or ‘inattentive’.”

Sound Scouts is a clinically validated hearing check designed for kids as a fun interactive game — the result of five years of R&D with the Australian Government’s hearing research lab, the National Acoustic Laboratories, led by Professor Harvey Dillon.