A shared foundation for better hearing care

Hearing care can involve many decisions, professionals, and visits. Patients and families need understandable information and clear next steps. Clinicians need practical ways to apply evidence, coordinate care, and learn whether the care they provide is helping.

UC HEARS is a UCSF-led program bringing those needs together. We are building a Learning Health System for hearing and tinnitus care: a collaboration in which patients, clinicians, researchers, and care organizations help shape shared approaches, examine what happens in practice, and use what they learn to improve care.

Our flagship digital platform, UCSF EARS (Equitable Access to Rehabilitative Services), provides the public foundation. The next phase connects these patient and family resources to professional tools, evidence-informed clinical pathways, structured documentation, and an internal deidentified clinical database (auditory_dB) in development across audiology.

Our ambition is to make UCSF a leading source of practical, evaluated models for hearing care that can be adapted across UC campuses, other health systems, and international settings.

Patient understanding and participation

Help people understand options, express priorities, and take an appropriate next step.

Multilingual education, videos, interactive tools, family support, and urgent routing.

Aligned clinical care

Give teams shared clinical starting points that support individualized decisions.

Evidence-informed pathways, counseling and decision tools, referrals, and structured documentation.

Continuous learning and improvement

Use information from actual care to identify gaps, evaluate changes, and improve practice.

The internal deidentified clinical database (auditory_dB), minimum datasets, outcomes, implementation research, and complementary resource feedback.

How the UC HEARS learning model works

The goal is a continuous connection between what people need, how care is delivered, and what teams learn. Published evidence and professional guidance inform every part of the cycle.

Closed-Loop Learning Health System Cycle Published evidence informs every stage
Stage 1 · Public Foundation Patient resources & preparation

12-language education, videos, interactive visit prep, and urgent safety routing via UCSF EARS.

Stage 2 · Clinical Practice Shared pathways & professional tools

Evidence-informed clinical care pathways, counseling aids, and structured documentation (in development).

Stage 3 · Learning Infrastructure auditory_dB clinical database & feedback

Internal deidentified clinical database (in development) paired with distinct public resource feedback.

Stage 4 · Return to Care Review findings & improve care

Evaluate outcomes and access, refine pathways and patient tools, and inform collaborative studies.

Public digital learning (Live) Resource use, language-version use, tool completion, helpfulness, and usability improvement—with clinical answers and audiometric values excluded.
Clinical learning via auditory_dB (In development) Deidentified care pathways, clinical findings, follow-up, and patient-reported outcomes drawn from clinical sources under institutional oversight.
Figure caption: Learning returns to care: reviewed findings inform the next version of a pathway, tool, educational resource, or clinical workflow.

Step 1: Help people prepare and participate

Patients and families use plain-language information, videos, and interactive tools to understand hearing and tinnitus concerns, identify priorities, and prepare for visits. Multilingual resources help patients and clinicians begin with shared information. Urgent symptom guidance helps people recognize when they need medical attention.

Step 2: Support consistent, individualized care

Shared clinical pathways and professional tools translate evidence into practical decisions, counseling, referrals, and follow-up. Structured documentation is being developed to capture the information that matters for care while limiting unnecessary work. Pathways provide a common foundation while allowing clinical judgment and adaptation to local settings.

Step 3: Learn from experience and outcomes

An internal deidentified clinical database (auditory_dB) is in development to help teams understand care pathways and outcomes across audiology. Drawing on clinical sources, this work is intended to describe current care, inform protocol development, and support evaluation as pathways change.

Clinical teams need to understand whether care is reaching people, whether follow-up occurs, what outcomes are documented, and where care processes need improvement. Protocols, structured documentation, and minimum datasets are being developed together so these questions can connect to usable clinical information.

EARS also uses feedback and privacy-preserving information about resource use to improve the public platform. Its learning-event system excludes clinical tool answers, symptom inputs, and audiometric values from those events. Website feedback and the internal clinical database serve distinct purposes; access to clinical sources and use of clinical data remain subject to appropriate institutional oversight.

Step 4: Evaluate improvements and connect research to care

Teams will use findings to refine care pathways, professional tools, training, and patient resources. Selected questions can become implementation studies or other collaborative research. Consistent clinical descriptions, outcome measures, and follow-up can also help participating sites assess readiness for clinical studies and trials of emerging hearing technologies and therapies.

Using UCSF EARS does not enroll anyone in research. Study participation follows the processes required for each study.

What is available now and what comes next

Phase 1 — UCSF EARS patient and family platform

Status: Live and maintained

UCSF EARS is the public digital platform for UC HEARS. It provides free resources to help patients and families understand hearing health, explore options, recognize urgent concerns, and prepare for care.

12 Languages Available
12 Interactive Decision Tools
840+ Educational Video Versions

The October 2026 platform includes:

The languages are English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Arabic, Punjabi, and Thai.

Review and translation labels describe the status of an individual resource. Availability in a language does not mean every resource has completed translation verification. With this foundation established, the public platform remains maintained while new program development focuses on connecting resources to clinical practice.

Phase 2 — Professional tools, standardized pathways, and clinical learning

Status: In active development

The next phase focuses on the people delivering and coordinating hearing care: audiologists, ear, nose, and throat specialists, primary care clinicians, mental health partners, and trainees.

Development priorities include:

  • Evidence-informed protocols and pathways that clarify essential care steps, decision points, referrals, and follow-up.
  • Counseling and decision-support tools linked to the patient resources available through UCSF EARS.
  • Structured documentation templates and a practical minimum dataset: a small, agreed set of information needed to describe care and evaluate it.
  • An internal deidentified clinical database (auditory_dB) that draws on clinical sources to support understanding of care pathways and outcomes across audiology.
  • Patient-reported outcomes and other measures selected for the clinical question, population, language, and setting.
  • Implementation resources that help teams use shared approaches across sites while documenting necessary local adaptations.

The aim is to make good care easier to deliver consistently and easier to evaluate. Database and protocol development inform one another: existing clinical information helps identify priorities, and shared pathways help define what teams need to document and measure. Professional resources will be clearly identified by intended use and review status as they become available. Clinical implementation will follow the approval processes of the relevant care setting.

Phase 3 — Learning across UC and partner sites

Status: Planned expansion

UC HEARS is designed to support collaboration across UC campuses and other clinical and research organizations. The next stage of expansion will build on evaluated UCSF implementation, shared definitions, and agreed responsibilities for clinical participation, data use, and improvement.

Partners will be able to contribute questions, test approaches in their own settings, and help interpret what works, for whom, and under what conditions. The long-term goal is a Learning Health System that produces useful evidence and returns that evidence to care.

Leadership, stewardship, and collaboration

UC HEARS is led by Rebecca M. Lewis, AuD, PhD, Founding Director of UC HEARS, Chief of Audiology at UCSF, and Program Director of Audiology for UCSF Health.

The program is being developed from UCSF for broader collaboration. Participating organizations will retain responsibility for their clinical implementation and data governance. Learning Health System development will bring clinical, patient and community, informatics, and research perspectives into decisions about priorities, measures, and improvement.

We welcome conversations with clinicians, UC campus colleagues, researchers, educators, and community partners interested in:

  • Developing or evaluating practical hearing and tinnitus care pathways.
  • Connecting patient education with clinical workflows and professional training.
  • Improving meaningful outcomes measurement and clinical documentation.
  • Contributing language expertise, lived experience, or community priorities.
  • Studying implementation and the responsible integration of emerging hearing therapies.

To discuss collaboration, use the EARS contact page, which welcomes partnership inquiries. Learn more about program leadership through Rebecca Lewis’s UCSF profile. For current patient care, appointments, or medical questions, use your care team’s established clinical contact routes.

Sudden hearing loss needs urgent attention

If hearing drops suddenly, all at once or over a period of up to 72 hours, seek medical care right away. The 72 hours describe how quickly hearing changed, not how long to wait. Do not delay care to complete a website tool.

See the Emergency and Urgent Care Guide for next steps. If the sudden change began more than 72 hours ago and has not been evaluated, seek urgent medical advice now. Call 911 in the United States for emergency symptoms such as new facial weakness, one-sided weakness, or trouble speaking.

Educational boundary

UCSF EARS resources support understanding and conversations with a care team. They do not diagnose a condition or replace individualized medical evaluation and treatment.

What UC HEARS connects

UC HEARS connects three foundations of better hearing care: informed patients and families, shared clinical approaches, and learning from actual care. UCSF EARS is available now. Professional tools, care pathways, and an internal deidentified clinical database (auditory_dB) are in development. Broader collaboration will build on what teams can implement, evaluate, and improve together.

Next steps

Explore UCSF EARS patient and family resources

Use interactive tools, plain-language guides, and videos in 12 languages before, between, or after visits.
See professional tools in development

Review Phase 2 priorities for shared clinical pathways, counseling aids, minimum datasets, and auditory_dB.
Discuss collaboration

Connect with the UC HEARS team via the EARS contact page regarding pathway, informatics, or research partnerships.

Related pages

Available Languages

Read this page in 12 languages:

English English Spanish Español Chinese (Simplified) 简体中文 Chinese (Traditional) 繁體中文 Vietnamese Tiếng Việt Tagalog Tagalog Japanese 日本語 Korean 한국어 Russian Русский Arabic العربية Punjabi ਪੰਜਾਬੀ Thai ไทย