An entrepreneur with a degree in Communications from Santiago del Estero Catholic University – DASS, Lourdes Patricia Sanchez co-founded a company that develops software products which aim to harness technological advances so as to enhance people’s quality of life. Her work earned her a certificate of honor from the Argentine Senate for her company’s commitment, creativity and efforts to develop an app for people who suffer from hearing loss. In 2014 her start-up won the Sadosky – IT Industry prize for best IT entrepreneurship, and that same year it won the NAVES competition (IAE Business School) in the “emerging company” category. uSound was also acknowledged by major institutions at the international level such as the Imagine Cup (Microsoft 2013) and MIT (“Under-35 Innovator in Argentina and Uruguay”- “Social Innovator of the Year (2014). uSound stems from the plight of a university classmate of Patricia’s who could not afford a hearing aid. His disability prevented him from doing such basic things as communicating and getting an education. Often, he could not arrive at class in time to sit in the front row and hear his professors better, so he decided to drop out of school. The dilemma had a major impact on Patricia and her team. So they started working to bring together health, technology and knowledge garnered at the university in order to create an innovative product and offer it as an affordable alternative for people who, like Patricia’s classmate, wanted to move ahead in life. The process began with thorough research into a disability that affects 640 million people around the world to one degree or another (WHO, 2012). The team decided to dedicate itself to improving the quality of life of such people. uSound is a software that uses the functionalities of smartphones so they work as digital hearing aids. Users can configure them by entering data regarding their audiometry – a measure of the range and sensitivity of a person’s sense of hearing, or they can carry out a hearing test with the app itself. The phone captures sound; uSound compensates for specific frequencies and plays back the adjusted sound over headphones in real time. It is also possible to use Bluetooth headphones, leave the smartphone near a source of sound and hear it at a distance, for instance in order to attend a school class. uSound has been downloaded more than 200,000 times and has more than 10,000 active users in 150 countries.
Website: http://www.usound.co/