Before I attended a recent Australian Acoustic Society tech talk, I’d never heard of the term biophilic design. I certainly hadn’t thought about how it might relate to the acoustic environment. Fortunately, PhD researcher, Merve Eşmebaşı was gracious enough to present her research on the subject. Like Soundmask, Merve’s principal focus is on improving human…

Private maternity clients are transferred to the private maternity suites a few hours after the birth of their baby. The purpose of the suites is to allow the mother to recover from the birth in a supported environment. The suites are located within the hospital, where alerts, calls and paging systems operate. The safe arrival…

Our previous two articles on noise pollution in hospitals and healthcare can be found here (Part 1) and (Part 2). In this third and final article, we cover the solutions to these problems. The acoustic ABC principles – “Absorb”, “Block” “Cover” – are a useful way to consider reducing noise pollution. For example, sound can…

The health impacts of noise pollution on patients and workers features in our last article. Continuing on, we tackle the privacy and workplace implications of noise pollution. Privacy breaches An important factor in patient comfort is privacy. Where patients feel that their medical information is private, they are more likely to disclose all relevant information…

Hospitals, medical suites and aged care facilities are all subject to noise pollution. More and more research is appearing to demonstrate problems caused by noise, which include: Noise pollution is also one of the risk factors for staff burnout and negative outcomes for patients. Further, noise pollution affects healthcare facility compliance with privacy and work…

The research into pink noise and sleep has been pioneered by Phyllis Zee at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Her research is useful because it confirms what we, here at Soundmask, have always known anecdotally: sound masking can be great for sleep. (Especially when it’s masking a disturbing noise that’s preventing you from…

Have you ever suspected a colleague of eavesdropping? Maybe that confidential meeting that you had with your boss has found its way around the office. Or perhaps you’ve heard private conversations that you’d rather not hear? We’ve all been in offices where speech privacy is a problem. I remember working in an office where the…

A little over twenty years ago, we installed a masking system into the heritage listed Sydney Opera House Box office. The installation featured our second generation transducers which were manufactured in Melbourne’s outer east. The box office The Sydney Opera House box office is the call centre for the Sydney Opera House. Before everyone could…

White noise. Sound conditioning. Many words are bandied about when attempting to describe sound masking. But what is it, actually? Sound masking is a sound introduced into a space to increase the background sound level for the purposes of reducing either or both the impact of intrusive noise and the intelligibility of speech. This can…

With high profile data breaches, privacy has been in the headlines. But sometimes medical practices, including alternative health practitioners and pharmacies, overlook auditory privacy. With patients and consumers more aware of their rights than ever before, practices need to be careful to comply with the law. Especially when fines and other sanctions can result. What…