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Article History

Received: 14 April 2025

Accepted: 10 January 2026

First Online: 16 February 2026

Declarations

:

: During the study, PI and PK were employed by the National Acoustics Laboratory, the research arm of Hearing Australia, and BP and RS were chief investigators on a research grant jointly funded by Macquarie University and Cochlear Ltd. At the time the research was conducted, ES was a Research Fellow at Macquarie University. At present, they are employed by the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. AAC has no conflicts of interest to declare. BP and AAC are editorial board members of PharmacoEconomics. They were not involved in the selection of peer reviewers for the manuscript nor any of the subsequent editorial decisions.

: Each author states that this manuscript is not currently under consideration by any other journal and has approved its contents.

: This study was approved by the Hearing Australia Human Research Ethics Committee and the Human Research Ethics Committees of the St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne (HREC 039/21), Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (HREC/10/RPAH/617), Australian Hearing Human Research Ethics Committee (AHREC/2012-5) in Sydney and the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital (HREC/10/978H/16) in Melbourne.

: Principal investigators Dr Teresa Ching and Dr Melanie Ferguson conceived the idea for the study, BP managed the economics study, and PI managed the CUSP study. JG and PK managed data collection. BP, ES, RS and AAC developed the conceptual economic model. RS analysed the utility data, and ES built the model and conducted the economic analysis. BP and AAC conducted quality assurance on the model. BP drafted the manuscript, and all the authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.