How is hearing aid technology changing for better?
In the 80’s and 90’s, hearing aids were simple amplifiers and the comfort in listening while using hearing aids were limited, which almost made it impossible to use them in noisy situations. As years passed, technology in this field is constantly evolving and new technologies are being developed to make listening through hearing aids more comfortable and adaptable.
Today, you can get hearing aid customised according to your hearing loss and use them comfortably in noisy situations. Many premium hearing aids learn by themselves yes you heard it right, they do have artificial intelligence in them making them a mini-computer by themselves.
1)Wireless connectivity: Hearing aids these days are equipped with wireless connectivity which helps the user to connect hearing aids with their smart phones, TV etc. This helps in streaming sound directly into the hearing aid and the end user can listen at ease.
2)Rechargeable hearing aids: Gone are the days when the user has to worry about constantly changing batteries. Majority of the hearing aids today, come with rechargeable options and there are even portable chargers for hearing aids just like your air pods. How cool is that right?
3)Customized hearing aids (CICs): Customizations have gone to the next level now. Your audiologist would be able to find the right custom mould for your ears which makes the clarity of the sound via hearing aid better and improves wearing comfort exponentially. There are many hearing aid providers with 3D customization technologies which make it more accurate for an enjoyable hearing experience.
4)Artificial Intelligence: Majority of premium hearing aids come with artificial intelligence. This feature helps the hearing aid to analyse the listening environment of each user independently and suggest programs which gives better clarity according to the lifestyle of the user. Hence improving the listening experience in challenging environments.
5)Innovative and modern Digital Hearing Aid styles: With everything in the world becoming further compact, hearing aids today have become much sleeker, smaller, and smarter. Most of them are super light weight and comfortable to wear. You will even find a few models that are almost invisible to notice while giving you complete connectivity with the world around you.
6) Advancements in sound quality: Quality of sound in hearing aids have improved by leaps and bounds! It’s so much that many users find their hearing aids sound extremely natural. Digital signal processing time has reduced and quality has elevated to a great extent, which helps with better music perception and better noise reduction.
Let us look into some features in specific:
a) Digital feedback suppression: Olden times hearing aids used to make whistling sound if we touch the aid or if the hearing aid fit is compromised, but latest hearing aids come with powerful digital feedback suppression circuits making the whistling disappear which has improved the wearing comfort to a good extent.
b) Expansion: We are surrounded by a variety of soft noises like the AC hum, the fan sound etc. A person with normal hearing sensitivity has natural filters in his brain which helps in filtering out these soft unwanted sounds. Therefore, the latest hearing aids technology offers soft level noise reductions as well, which help in eliminating these unwanted sounds at hearing aid level itself which makes hearing through a hearing aid a more natural process.
c)Noise tracking: Digital hearing aids usually come with a mic, an amplifier, and a speaker. So which sounds are to be amplified and which ones are to be reduced is difficult for a hearing aids system to understand. Latest advancements in technology have helped in creating noise tracking algorithms in hearing aids. Also, many premium hearing aids can today detect environments like restaurants or a quiet room (with little to no background noise) and programs itself to improve speech recognition and reduce the background noise.
d) Hearing aids communication: Do you know our ear talk to each other? Yes, as the sound from our ears reaches our brainstem which is analysed and brain understands from which side the sound was louder and faster, this helps us in understanding direction from which the sound is coming. Much like this concept, today hearing aids also talk to each other. This helps the hearing aids to understand speech better even in the presence of background noise.
e) Microphone Directionality: This is one functionality which has seen the most amount of advancement. The hearing aid mic changes the sensitivity according to the listening environments and this helps in understanding speech in noisy situations. As explained before, premium hearing aids talk to each other and decide the directionality together, this helps in switching to the optimal microphone mode on each ear, so the strongest voice signal is clear without losing the ability to perceive the surroundings and other speakers. Some hearing aids have three microphones available where the third one sits inside the ear canal and helps in improving the naturalness of the sound.
f) A Hearing aid not only amplifies the sounds, but it also compresses the sounds if it is too loud. These compression circuits in hearing aids have advanced to such a large extent that most of the hearing aids have an extremely smooth reduction of sudden loud sounds (impulse sounds).
g) Compatibility with Hearing aid apps : Majority of the hearing aids come with apps now and it has features like fall detection, find your hearing aids and some apps even helps in tracking the health status of the user like steps taken, sleep pattern etc.
We are going through an era where the hearing aids industry is witnessing advancements exponentially. These advancements have made hearing aids more accessible, customizable, and effective for individuals with various intensities and types of hearing loss.
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