The social impact of a better and more affordable hearing aid would be immense. Especially since the social isolation of hearing loss takes such a devastating toll on one’s social life. And it’s there’s interesting technical challenges that have to be solved. Mainly packing as much digital signal processing onto a very low compute environment.
As someone with hearing loss, it’s sad to see promising startups like Whisper.AI leave the market. There should be dozens of hearing aid startups out there. Where are they?
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
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Hearing aids are regulated as medical devices, that means additional costs and delays for certification before a new device can be brought to market. Also, the target audience is limited to around 10% of the population, and most medical devices are paid for by insurance companies so anytime you add a feature for quality of life insurance companies will argue it’s not necessary and push for the cheaper version.
Also worth mentioning that you couldn’t get hearing aids over-the-counter until 2022. I think there’s room for innovation in the space now, but it’s still a new thing.
Can confirm. I work in R&D in the automotive sector, and we looked into getting into medical. There’s government regulation to handle, and (in the US) shenanigans around insurance. The technology isn’t necessarily that complicated, but the industry is.
What I’m surprised hasn’t hit the market is a “non-medical” hearing aid–i.e. a wireless earbud that has a function to amplify pass-through. Would likely be used as a hearing aid by those who can’t get/afford them, but might get to avoid the regulation and insurance hassle.
I’m sure there are plenty, we just haven’t heard of them.
Probably because the market is saturated from crap to ultra expensive https://www.amazon.com/s?k=otc+hearing+aid
Why would it need to be startups in the first place
Tech Startups seek to grift and pull profit from the middle of normal things, thus making them less reliable with apps and more expensive to account for it.
I’d love to see a non-profit open source hearing aid technology, not an Uber of hearing aids.
I’ve got moderate hearing loss, and in situations with a lot of background noise, (bars, restaurants, etc) I’ve given up on trying to be part of conversations. I’ll just zone out on the tv or stare at my phone. As someone who is outgoing and enjoys conversation, it’s a horrible turn of events. Since American healthcare feels that hearing is a luxury, nothing is covered. And I don’t have $5k laying around to fix it. I’ve test fit the cheaper ones, but they don’t fix my issues.
I don’t know about in the us, but here in Canada I can get hearing aids at Costco for about $1,000 each. And the provincial government kicks in $500, so I could get a pair for $1,000.
Still a significant amount of money, but within my budget.
Costco’s hearing centers also employ licensed audiologists (minimum of a master’s degree), rather than “hearing aid specialists” who have just done a two-year college course.
Can they pair over Bluetooth?
What if you wear headphones over them? Does that work? Then you could connect those to a directional mic. And maybe you can make it so it doesn’t look totally idiotic.
The ones for $5k I’m looking at can connect with a phone app via BT that adjusts volume on ears separately, and answer the phone as well. With the tinnitus I have, I don’t care what I look like, it’s slowly driving me insane.
I’ve been told the tinnitus is the symptom of hearing loss and not the cause, and that it can be corrected with hearing aids. I’d give my left nut if that were true though, so I don’t know.
Replying to both your msgs. Ya I have tinnitus as well and it’s difficult to compare. I also knew someone who was ready to kill himself because it was so bad for him. I’ve been looking for solutions for a while.
Afaik there’s no direct treatment. However there are some pills that can help for specific cases, that reduce the blood pressure which can be a factor. It’s worth a try. I can’t remember the name but it was specifically for tinnitus.
As far as I understand it knowledge is limited because it’s something that happens in the brain. That the cause might be that the brain adapts to hearing loss in an undesirable way, by connecting the auditory center to the wrong place, and so the sound you hear is actually activity in that part of your brain. In certain cases that can mean that reducing stress or taking certain drugs can reduce the activity and consequently the tinnitus too.
On the other topic, I was just thinking that perhaps you could wear cupped sound canceling headphones on top of your hearing aids and then use a directional mic. Maybe there’s even headphones that already include that function. It really depends on how your hearing aid works.
So a few great points you made here.
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I told the audiologist that it’s almost crippling, and she made a point to tell me to get help if I’m thinking of harming myself. I’m not, because I’ll just pipe white noise throughout my entire house before I consider that. That seems to dull it a bit for me. iPhones have an app called “hearing” built into control center that you can enable, and it plays different kinds of white noise. I run that all night and it seems to help dull my tinnitus a bit while I sleep. I do have the over the ear noise cancelling headphones, and playing music through that does help me as well.
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there’s no direct treatment afaik also. My blood pressure isn’t a factor here, but that was looked at. And the audiologist also made the same point about the brain compensating for hearing loss. According to what I was told, it’s a symptom of hearing loss, not the cause. My mom has hearing aids, and in her case, they pretty much eliminated her tinnitus, which I’m just praying that it does the same for me, or at least lessens it.
Everyone’s tinnitus is different for sure, but I’m just hoping that wearing the hearing aids will at least dull mine a bit. I test fit some and it definitely helped with hearing conversations, so here’s to hoping I guess.
Another tidbit of info I have is that if you have an annoying sound, like say your neighbor is playing music, it is only annoying if you know you can’t change it. If you’re friends with the neighbor and so you know you can go over and stop it, it’ll suddenly stop being annoying and you won’t even ask for it.
Thr question is if this is applicable to you and if you could somehow trick yourself into that. Magbe by meditating you could go into the sound instead of your usual pattern of trying to get away from it. That way you grow a new habit of sort of going with it and finding it enjoyable even in some way.
At least that helped me with a lot of other stuff like emotions.
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To be clear, they aren’t bad questions you’re asking, but it’s hard to explain unless you experience it. For fun, search “6500 hz tinnitus” On youtube, and see how long you can stand it. Then understand that I’ve been hearing that nonstop for like 2 years now, 24/7
On a semi related note, my sister had early onset hearing loss, and needs hearing aids. One thing that surprised me about what they are doing with them now is they are Bluetooth enabled, so she can listen to music on them from her phone. It can be a bit annoying though because there’s no social queue that says I have headphones on and can’t hear you if you are trying to start a conversation.
I use them all the time, for phone calls and for podcasts, and it drives my wife crazy.
It’s actually no different from someone having airpods in, just less visible.
