australiahears.com.au have an excellent article by Elaine Saunders called: Why is an audiogram commonly used as the basis for fitting a hearing aid?

It explains how audiograms works and how they measures your hearing loss against a benchmark rather than your hearing ability. It also gives a brief history of measuring and diagnosing hearing loss. What’s most interesting though is this snippet:“… a threshold measure of hearing loss is used to estimate how a hearing aid should be set up to work at normal speech and noise levels. It’s not very logical.”

It’s an interesting point, I always understood the audiogram to be the focal point of a hearing aid fitting. I always thought that the result of the audiogram determined my aids settings and I would be more or less ready to wear them after that. I’ve always had the audiologist tweak or change my settings a bit but I just assumed that maybe I was being a bit picky or maybe my hearing loss was a bit unusual or something.

I used to think of a hearing test and resulting audiogram as being a bit like a vision test when I go for new glasses: have the test, get the prescription, pick a make and model and away you go. But Elaine’s article made me realise that really the two are very, very different.

Read the original article on australiahears.com.au

Unitron introduced their Flex:trial hearing aid in October 2012 and it looks set to make the hearing aid buying process a little less painful.

Everyone knows that hearing aids are expensive and people looking to buy are often put off by the big outlay. There has always been a problem with being able to try before you buy: you feel uneasy about handing over your money when you haven’t tried the aid properly and you aren’t  sure if you really want it – and the dispenser can’t give you the hearing aid to try without a payment in case you walk off with it and are never seen again. Stalemate.

Unitron’s Flex:trial fixes this problem: it is essentially time-limited hearing aid. The Flex:trial model allows dispensers to give you a risk-free trial – you don’t have to pay up-front and they aren’t risking giving away a free hearing aid. A dispenser can program the Flex:trial to operate for a fixed length of time – as that time nears its end the aid will beep at you to let you know your trial is nearly over, first it will beep every hour as a gentle warning, progressing up to beeping every minute.

The Flex:trial is a fully-functioning unit. It is exactly the same as the unit you would purchase if you decided to keep it after the trial – the limitation is the time, not features. If you like the trial model then what you buy should be exactly the same.

Dispensers can also configure the aid to operate as any of the models in the Flex:trial line – so you can demo the cheaper offering, then demo the more expensive offering. This is a brilliant way of comparing the features of each model and will go a long way to helping you choose what works for you. I’ve been in numerous situations with dispensers where I’ve been offered several models and when I say, “Well, why is this one £800 more than that one? What do I get for my £800?”, they can’t answer with specifics, they can just say that it works better and I could hear more. Whilst that is probably true it’s not enough information for me to part with £800. But with the Flex:trial you are free to make the comparison yourself.

I really like this idea of a demo unit, in fact, I wrote about it back in 2009! As far as I know the Flex:trial is the first of its sort to hit the market but I’m sure other manufacturers will follow suit at some point because it’s a great idea.

If you try out a Flex:trial then please drop me a line, I’d love to know how you get on with it.

Yes they are. No they’re not. Yes they are. No they’re definitely not.

Siemens have decided to hold on to their audiology division. To reinforce their desire to push forward their hearing aid business, they’ve appointed a new CEO in Roger Radke. A quote from them:

“With this nomination, we hope to reinforce our activities in the domain of hearing aids, especially with the solid experience and vast network that Roger Radke obtained when he worked in the audiology branch of Siemens,” says the group. Stefan Schaller will have new responsibilities within the firm. “We are currently facing several major challenges,” explained Herman Requardt, CEO of Siemens’ Healthcare Sector. “The market has become more and more difficult. It is consolidating more and more. The economic models of our competitors and our clients change. You know that for the past several months we have examined how to better manage this situation and how to lead our audiology activity to success. We considered all the options and, in this context, we examined offers from investors and from other companies. Now, we will again concentrate on our traditional forces and work to recover our market share with new and attractive products, excellent customer service, investment growth and new partnerships.”

A team of scientists from Sheffield University have partially restored the hearing of deaf gerbils with injections created from human embryonic stem cells. Is this the end for hearing aids?

Not just yet.

The Sheffield team, lead by Dr Marcelo Rivolta, saw the gerbil’s hearing improving by an average of 46% – with the improvement taking place over four weeks from the injections. Rivolta said, “We developed a method to drive human embryonic stem cells to produce both hair cells and neurons, or nerve cells, but we only transplanted the neurons. We then used a technique called auditory brainstem evoked responses (ABR), which measures if the brain can perceive an electrical signal after sound stimulation. The responses of the treated animals were substantially better than those untreated, although the range of improvement was broad. Some subjects did very well, while in others recovery was poor”.

The type of hearing loss that was treated in the gerbils was very similar to auditory neuropathy, which means roughly 15% of those with hearing loss could benefit this work. Auditory neuropathy is a type of deafness where the problem lies, not primarily with the hair cells, but in the connection of the hair cells with the brain. Patients can be born with it and there are cases due to a genetic defect where a few responsible genes have already been identified.

Which means, as I understand it, if you have noise-induced hearing loss, age-related hearing loss or sensorineural hearing loss then this treatment would not work for you.

Dr Rivolta is hopeful that if tests on gerbils continue to produce good results and are shown to be safe then human trials could start in as little as two years.

Apple have filed a patent application for a “hearing aid social network” – you can read the actual application here. This has only recently been submitted (July 29 2012) and there isn’t much other information around the web on what a hearing aid social network could actually be – although Engadget and –>Megan have also written about it.

The social network seems to be intending to offer its users the ability to share their hearing aid settings with other network members and allow a member’s hearing aid to be updated with “at least some of the information passed between members“.

The idea is that if members of the social network are near to each other – for example, both in a noisy coffee shop – then their Apple device and hearing aid can automatically connect to the other network member and share information about optimal settings for the coffee shop environment.

But it doesn’t stop there, I haven’t read the whole patent as it’s big, but here’s interesting snippet I did notice:

In one embodiment, a number of different HA profiles can be available based upon, for example, the acoustics of the immediate surroundings of the hearing aid user. For example, a first HA profile can be used for processing external audio emanating from a generally quiet background environment such as a library, whereas a second HA profile can be used to process external audio emanating from a noisy environment such as a rock concert. In one embodiment, the hearing aid wearer can use an image capture device, such a camera, included in a portable device, such as a smartphone, to capture an image of the immediate surroundings. The captured image can then be used to estimate an acoustic environment based upon, for example, the nature of the immediate surroundings (indoor, outdoor, for example) and, if indoor, the dimensions of the room in which the hearing aid wearer is located.

Wow! This could well mean that our future hearing aids could continuously learn optimal settings for specificenvironments. We already have generic settings for music, restaurants, etc that we can have customised to our own preference – is Apple crowd-sourcing data on the best settings for your favourite restaurant? Think about that, you don’t have a generic setting for all restaurants, you have a specific setting for the Starbucks on your street!

Today’s smartphones are all location aware so this is definitely possible. I think my mind has just been blown.

As far as I know there’s been no official word from Apple about this network – they are notorious for keeping quiet on new products and then revealing all in a blaze of glory – so I’m really just guessing based on the legal-speak from the patent. But it is certainly exciting and a game-changer for the hearing industry. Looks like the disruption is here already.

A couple of things that I’m dying to find out more about:

1. How will this work with an individual’s hearing loss? My hearing loss is nothing like yours and so our hearing aids are programmed for our losses – so any automatic location-aware programme changes need to take that into account.
2. It’s easy to see how a setting for specific restaurant could be better than a generic setting for all restaurants, but: how will that be better than a smart digital aid automatically adjusting to its environment? Maybe this is aimed at low-cost hardware with the software running on an Apple iOS device rather than in your ear?
3. If one hearing aid learns the best settings for an environment and passes it onto other members of the social network then why can’t those other member’s hearing aids just learnt he optimal settings too without having to receive them over the network?

Whatever this turns out to be it is guaranteed to be ground-breaking and an industry-changer. Can’t wait!

In the forthcoming iOS 6 software upgrade for the iPhone, Apple have have said that:

We are working with top manufacturers to introduce Made for iPhone hearing aids that will deliver a power-efficient, high-quality digital audio experience.

It would be nice if this meant the birth of an Apple iHearingAid, which blazed a trail through the hearing industry and took hearing aids into the mainstream. Sadly, the reality is a little less exciting, but still very useful: Apple is working with hearing aid manufacturers to make sure hearing aid wearers get the best possible sound quality when using their iPhone – presumably manufacturers/aids that pass this QA test will be able to display a “Made For iPhone” badge.

How are they working to make a “power-efficient, high-quality digital audio experience”? My guess is that Apple will either create a neckloop to allow bluetooth connectivity to iPhones – the iNeck! – or they will do away with the neckloop altogether and provide a small plugin device  that goes into the iPhone power port to allow bluetooth connections. It would be a major advance on what we have at the moment if they did away with the neckloop. Apple will presumably be asking the manufactures to implement their single bluetooth connectivity protocol in order to get the “Made for iPhone” stamp.

I guess this would also open up the possibility of an iPhone app to allow you to change volume, switch programmes and make other changes to your aid. Some manufacturers already have these control apps, and indeed most manufacturers offer bluetooth connectivity, but this will be the first time that devices from different manufacturers could be controlled using a single device.

What’s your take on the Apple hearing aid announcement? With this and the social network, it looks like Apple have one eye firmly on the hearing industry.

“Hearing aids are becoming a more and more interesting target not only to hack, but also simply to connect them to all kinds of consumer hardware and make the experience more seamless,” said Helga Velroyen, a Munich-based software engineer who has been at the forefront of efforts to modify hearing aids.

Her interest in the topic was sparked when her own hearing started to degrade a few years ago.

For some, this tinkering does not go far enough. Edinburgh-based engineer Martin Ling has set up a project to produce one in which all the parts and the code it runs would be accessible to anyone to work on and improve.

Mr Ling’s early attempts to hack a hearing aid involved dismantling one of his partner’s old ones and wiring it up to a laptop to watch how it handled sound. Now he is working on a design built from scratch.

“We could make a small number of these so we could get hardware in the hands of people that wanted to test it,” he said. “Then as the signal-processing ideas get pinned down we can start to work on miniaturising it.”

Dr Kevin Munro, professor of audiology at the University of Manchester, was sceptical about Mr Ling’s chances of producing a DIY device.

“They are not the sorts of things you can throw together in a garden shed,” he said, adding that hearing-aid makers invested hugely in research and development to produce the gadgets on sale now.

This is from a BBC article, looks like the idea of DIY hearing aids and making programme changes for yourself is starting to go mainstream. Interesting times ahead for the hearing industry!

Earmeter is web-based software that allows audiology practices and their patients to work more closely during and after hearing aid trials.

Practices can automate communications with patients so that they can provide timely and in-depth information about the new hearing aid(s) on trial, hearing loss and anything else that a patient needs to know to get the most from their trial and new hearing experience. Earmeter aims to make it easier for practices to provide all the information that they know their patients need but can’t cram into a one-hour consultation.

A critical part of any hearing aid trial is the feedback from the patient, Earmeter helps with that too.

Practices can set up questions for the patient to answer during the trial. Questions can be asked once on a specific day of the trial or they can be asked multiple times at different intervals. For example, “You’ve had your hearing aids for a week now, are you able to listen more easily to the TV than you did last week?” could be asked on day 7 of the trial and, “Did you struggle to hear anyone talking today?” could be asked every day, every two days or twice a week. Patients are given a username/password by the dispenser/audiologist and can login to Earmeter from any PC or device, once logged-in they get a set of questions to answer for that day. Earmeter tracks how many and how often patients are logging in and answering and keeps a running total – this allows practices to monitor a patient’s progress and also means that they can offer incentives for a completed set of questions during a trial.

Why I built Earmeter

I built Earmeter in the last 6 months of 2011. My aim was to make the process of buying and trialling a new hearing as simple as possible, for both the seller and the buyer. The seller wants happy customers and the buyer wants the best chance of hearing everything they want to hear. I hope Earmeter can make that happen.

David Peter is a 21 year old computer programmer at San Francisco-based startup 1000memories. He is also deaf and the company’s first deaf employee. David has written a thought-provoking blog post on what it is like to be deaf and how it affects both his professional and personal life.

He writes about things that are probably familiar to most of us with a hearing problem: the sense of isolation, problems with group conversation, communication and accessibility. He writes from the heart and you get a real sense of someone who is surrounded by people every day but still feels alone.

Being Deaf by David Peter.

In preparation for May’s NATO summit in Chicago, the city’s police force ordered a sound cannon to help them deal with the expected large number of anti-war protesters.

The cannon emits high-pitched sounds up to 150 decibels that can be heard up to 1,600 feet away, that’s about a third of a mile. A 150 dB blast from the cannon is louder than standing next to an aircraft taking off or someone firing a gun right next to you. The pain-threshold in humans is about 110 – 120 decibels, so this thing is going to hurt.

Karen Piper, a former visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University who attended the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, sued the city after allegedly sustaining permanent hearing loss when the city used their sound cannon. “The intensity of being hit at close range by a high-pitched sound blast designed to deter pirate boats and terrorists at least a quarter mile away is indescribable. The sound vibrates through you and causes pain throughout your body, not only in the ears. I thought I might die,” Piper, now an English professor at the University of Missouri, said in a press release. “It is shocking that the device is being promoted for use on American citizens and the general public.”

Whilst the police obviously need to be equipped to control rioting, the use of sonic weapons is worrying, particular as they have a range of up to 1/3 of a mile – if a cannon is used against a hostile front-line of a crowd, many more behind them are going to suffer too.

Not only is permanent hearing loss a certainty for those hit, tinnitus will be a problem too. The NATO summit has already happened and from reports it looks like even though there was trouble, the sound cannon wasn’t used.

The quote above comes from a Better Hearing Institute press release and you can read more here.