{"id":19091,"date":"2022-03-31T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T19:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/power-platform\/blog\/power-apps\/hearing-australia-audiologist-adopts-microsoft-power-platform-to-transform-hearing-loss-prevention-program\/"},"modified":"2025-06-11T07:50:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T14:50:29","slug":"hearing-australia-audiologist-adopts-microsoft-power-platform-to-transform-hearing-loss-prevention-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/power-platform\/blog\/power-apps\/hearing-australia-audiologist-adopts-microsoft-power-platform-to-transform-hearing-loss-prevention-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Hearing Australia – Audiologist adopts Microsoft Power Platform to transform hearing loss prevention program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hearing Australia is Australia\u2019s largest provider of government-funded hearing services for children, young adults, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, pensioners, and veterans. They have been servicing people with hearing loss in Australia for 75 years.\u00a0The organization runs the Hearing Assessment Program \u2013 Early Ears (HAPEE) which is funded by a government grant and is dedicated to the prevention, early detection, and treatment of hearing loss in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged 0 to 6 years old, not yet attending full time school. HAPEE has three key objectives:<\/p>\n

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  1. Provide training and support<\/strong> to local primary health care professionals and early childhood educators to help detect and prevent avoidable hearing loss.<\/li>\n
  2. Provide awareness raising activities<\/strong> so that families can identify hearing loss and ear disease early on in their young children and learn practical ways to support their children\u2019s hearing health.<\/li>\n
  3. Provide diagnostic assessment<\/strong> and clinical services<\/strong> to communities.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These three key objectives help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities assess and manage ear disease themselves.<\/p>\n

    Jacqui Peck, an audiologist at Hearing Australia, recognized they needed a system to help Community Engagement Officers and Audiologists collect the information gathered from their community visits for HAPEE. However, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) team did not have sufficient capacity to build the system, Jacqui took the initiative to find a low-code platform that she could easily learn and self-build the solution. She loved the ease of building Power Apps solutions with Dataverse. By partnering with code-first developers in the ICT team, development best practices were applied. From the development guidance received, Jacqui built two Power Apps model-driven apps, embedded Power BI reports, several Power Automate cloud flows and utilized the built-in Dynamics 365 Apps for phones and Outlook.<\/p>\n

    The solution is actively used today by more than 100 Community Engagement Officers and Audiologists who are now able to collect and update data from their mobile devices, even when visiting remote communities with no internet coverage.<\/p>\n

    This article describes how Jacqui adopted Dataverse and Power Apps model-driven app to build a low-code solution for the HAPEE program. This solution later won the Australian Information Industry Association\u2019s ACT Division Government and Public Sector Solution of the Year Award, and over the past year Jacqui\u2019s career has evolved from being an audiologist to a low-code developer and analyst in the ICT team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Watch a short video of Jacqui’s story<\/strong><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

    \"Hearing<\/a><\/p>\n

    Business Challenge<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    All clinical aspects of Hearing Australia\u2019s services are covered in their current IT systems. HAPEE was a new initiative that required the collection of additional non-clinical information \u2013 something that was not easily available in existing systems. As new programs take time to mature, Jacqui had found the information for HAPEE was in a fragmented form for their Community Engagement Officers and Audiologists which caused several issues:<\/p>\n

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    1. It was difficult to circulate their efforts with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to other stakeholders in the program.<\/li>\n
    2. They lacked access to the most up-to-date information when visiting communities. This includes latest information on the community of their next visit, such as activities that had already taken place and what considerations and customs needed to be followed to provide culturally appropriate services.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      These issues were impacting the team as they were spending a lot of time in finding and updating the information. It was labor intensive, and as the program expanded, limitations of the existing systems became more apparent.<\/p>\n

      Jacqui Peck’s journey adopting low-code<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Jacqui has over 13 years of experience in adult rehabilitation and pediatric audiology across Australia and New Zealand. In 2019 Jacqui joined Hearing Australia as a pediatric outreach audiologist for the HAPEE program, visiting remote areas of Australia to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to prevent hearing loss in young children.<\/p>\n

      The HAPEE program was new at the time and Jacqui saw the need for a better way of managing HAPEE\u2019s data and information. Her original idea was to have a paper form where all information needed by Community Engagement Officers and Audiologists was available in one place and could be printed prior to a community visit. However, using manual forms and other data sources such as Excel spreadsheets would still result in duplication of information leading to difficulties in updating and maintaining the information long term. Additionally, it was difficult to know if the information being viewed and acted upon from a paper form was the most up-to date or if there was newer information available.<\/p>\n

      Jacqui realized she needed a digital solution for HAPEE but their ICT team had no capacity to work on a new project. Determined to come up with a solution, Jacqui explored the Power Platform as a low-code approach to fill the gap \u2013 it ticked all the boxes. She learnt everything she could about Power Apps and Dataverse during a 3-month stint in the Australian outback where she was testing ears by day and building apps at night.<\/p>\n

      \"Jacqui<\/p>\n

      With Jacqui\u2019s business knowledge and the ICT team\u2019s code-first development experience, together, as a fusion team, they developed the \u201cHAPEE Operations Hub\u201d solution for Hearing Australia. This reduced dependency on the ICT team for development and accelerated the delivery of a much-needed solution for HAPEE.<\/p>\n

      \n

      \u201cPower Apps really allows us to create our solutions, so building something, rebuilding it, refining it, and getting it up to the minimal viable product point of maturity. And that way, ICT has a really clear idea about working with the product that we already know works.\u201d<\/em><\/h4>\n
      \u2013 Jacqui Peck, Low-Code Developer and Analyst, Hearing Australia<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
      <\/div>\n

      As a result of Jacqui\u2019s dedication to HAPEE, her willingness to learn new skills and her partnership with the ICT team, Hearing Australia developed a low-code Power Platform solution that is now used by over 100 Community Engagement Officers and Audiologists in the remote communities of Australia. Later in 2021, this solution led to Hearing Australia winning the Australian Capital Territory Government Public Sector Solution of the Year award from the Australian Information Industry Association. Jacqui is now part of the ICT team as a Low-Code Developer and Analyst where she continues to champion building low-code solutions.<\/p>\n

      HAPEE Power Platform solution<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Dataverse as the foundation<\/strong><\/h4>\n

      After developing a minimum viable product for HAPEE and gaining approval from the ICT team, Jacqui was provided with her own environment to build the next version of the HAPEE solution. Jacqui and the ICT team decided early on to build on Dataverse<\/strong> as the data source. This was important as Jacqui realized using SharePoint or Excel would not be a scalable solution for HAPEE as they grow exponentially. With complex data they needed the ability to see all the links between their data \u2013 between the people who work in the community, the community members themselves, the cultural information they need to capture, the site visits, as well as manage and monitor hundreds of items of equipment and people Australia wide. Having a relational database in Dataverse provided a scalable solution and the team were able to gain insights through the built-in dashboards in Power Apps model-driven apps<\/strong>. The capabilities extended further by incorporating Power BI<\/strong> visualizations, using the Dynamics 365 app for phones<\/strong> and the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

      \"HAPEE<\/p>\n

      Solution architecture diagram of the Power Platform HAPEE Operations Hub solution.<\/em><\/p>\n

      HAPEE Operations Hub<\/strong><\/h4>\n

      This is a Power Apps model-driven app<\/strong> that is the front-end user interface for all Audiologists and Community Engagement Officers. All users can access the app anywhere including remote locations with offline capabilities through an additional offline model-driven app. The records in the app are designed in a way that enables easy visibility into their level of engagement and support with more than 200 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.<\/p>\n

      \"HAPEE<\/p>\n

      Hearing Australia can track the capability building of a clinic with the HAPEE Power Apps model-driven app, how well the clinic can support their health workers in providing hearing assessments to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.<\/em><\/p>\n

      For visualization of how they\u2019re tracking across the communities, they embedded Power BI reports<\/strong> with Bing Maps in the app. This allows them to see all community visits, including areas which may not have had a lot of activity and thus requires more attention from HAPEE. It also allows the program to track attendance rates to clinics and training. Power Automate<\/strong> acts as the central nervous system to the model-driven app and is used to refresh the dataset to generate the Power BI reports, sync data with a SharePoint Online list for historical data purposes, and automatically update fields with geolocation details. There is work underway to develop automation to notify users when training certificates expire and when equipment needs to be recalibrated.<\/p>\n

      \"HAPEE<\/p>\n

      Embedded Power BI dashboard provides greater visibility of their reach and efforts across the communities.<\/em><\/p>\n

      Community Engagement Officers and Audiologists have benefitted from additional capabilities that come built-in with Dataverse and Power Platform:<\/p>\n