**4. What "advances" can be?**

Considering the long history of Audiology and Hearing Science, it is only natural that numerous and fundamental volumes exist (as the all‐time reference by Katz [13]) in English and in many other languages. So it was an interesting challenge to chart the latest "advances" in the field and to find the best way to diffuse the new information to students and professionals.

The term "**advances**" implies a further development on a specific topic. For the area of Audiology, this would mean developments in the following thematic areas: (i) clinical hearing assessment procedures, (ii) rehabilitation strategies, (iii) hardware development (more precise equipment, better sensors, lower noise, etc.), (iv) telemedicine/teleconsultation concepts, and (v) new methods of long‐distance learning and undergraduate/graduate course delivery. Any of these areas could have been the exclusive topic of the present volume.

For practical reasons (and with the hopes that other future books can follow covering the remaining thematic areas), the focus of the present volume is limited to the first two major thematic areas, namely to developments in assessment procedures and rehabilitation strategies (cochlear implants).
