$1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss • Hacker News Board

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#121

Post by canada_dry » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

wefarrell wrote: post #72

rini17 wrote: post #7

Hearing aids (nor cochlear implants, for that matter) do not "restore hearing", except for light hearing loss. They are only like crutches (not even wheelchair). For example, to follow conversations or phone/skype with multiple people is very exhausting even with fancy device, because in most cases the "bandwidth" to the brain just isn't available. That said, the hearing aids vendor lock-in is really atrocious and ca…

Cochlear implants do not "restore hearing" but they do allow people who are completely deaf to sense sound well enough to understand speech. That's a huge change in a deaf person's life.

> to sense sound well enough

My understanding is that it's like a low-sighted person being able to see contrasts and outlines of things. It's enough to differentiate things, but significantly less than the detail of regular ability.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#122

Post by pkaye » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

sputr wrote: post #78

jononor wrote: post #16

Looks like Chinese manufactures already sell hearing aid devices in the 25-50 USD price range. https://www.banggood.com/search/hearing-aid.html Unlike the device from the article (which would cost more like 10 USD than 1), these are rechargeable and fully integrated over-the-ear units. Would love to see a low-cost open/hackable hearingaid/hearable though. For example BOM of 5-10 USD. But then it should use a reprogra…

Damn that link made me happy. Was wondering if anyone has done to hearing aids what they did for glasses. We just brought my father progressive glasses for 100usd (would be 400+usd here at a 'normal' store). Now he needs a hearing aid and we're dreading the multi-hundred payment on top of what is covered with insurance for a basic device. So.. What's the catch with these cheap hearing aids? Why would we not buy these…

I just got myself some Costco Signature hearing aids a month ago. Its $1499/pair. Its made by a major manufacturer named Phonak. The feature set is close to their top of the line model. Half the cost of the hearing aids in the US is actually the fitting by the audiologist and they have to pay for their expenses. You have to spend considerable time with the audiologist to measure, fit and calibrate the device to your needs. Costco is able to minimize the cost overhead since the office is inside a normal Costco store.

The hard part about hearing aids is making them work in noise. You don't want to just amplify everything or you just hear more noise. Also you need to tune it to your hearing loss otherwise you may damage your hearing. They do things like expanding the dynamics or compressing to prevent loud noises. They suppress wind noise. They can focus on the voice of someone in a group of people.

So the catch with the cheaper hearing aids is that may not help help your dad with understand speech as well as a better quality one.

I'd suggest you watch the videos of Dr Clif Aud on Youtube. He is very informative.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#123

Post by newyankee » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

patorjk wrote: post #46

As an aside, there's a lot of exciting regenerative work going on related to hearing at the moment. Sometime soon we may no longer need hearing aids. There are some neat drugs either in clinical trials or about to begin clinical trials that will re-grow hair cells and broken synapses in the cochlea (ex: FX-322, OTO-413, OTO-6XX).

Stefan Heller from Stanford's lab had set a goal somewhere around in 2010 to cure hearing loss by 2020 by trying to convert stem cells to hair cells. I have never heard of any breakthrough. I hope this happens in 10 more years at least.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#124

Post by pkaye » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

brento wrote: post #18

I was told I could benefit from hearing aids, but was told they would cost $5K to $8K depending on which ones I wanted. I've decided for now that I'll put up with the issues associated with not having them for now. I was also told they blue tooth doesn't work very well if you have an android phone, so I'm hoping that there can be some real innovation and competition in this space to drive the prices down and also imp…

I just started using hearing aids and went with the Costco Signature. Half the cost of hearing aids is the office overheads since hearing aids need significant tuning. Costco is able to leverage its existing store overhead to minimize it. The Costco ones re made by Phonak and based on the features on the Phonak Marvel series.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#125

Post by emcq » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

The most accurate description is probably the authors built a hearing aid from the 1960s with only $1 today [0]. Its worn around the neck, doesn't have any fitting, doesn't appear to have beamforming or feedback management, and low amplification.

It turns out these things are all important in clinical outcomes for listening comfort and intelligibility. I've built a modern hearing aid and done extensive patient testing - the details matter and it's not just electrical or algorithm problems but tough mechanical and UX challenges to get something more state of the art.

While I haven't worn many neck mounted devices, the Bose Headphones can get crazy feedback and the feedback path is similar. This would cause squealing discomfort for patients and everyone around them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hearing_aids

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#126

Post by pkaye » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

janekm wrote: post #54

ajnin wrote: post #23

So this is a very simple circuit. Basically a microphone amplifier directly connected to some earphones with a volume knob. No frequency control of any kind. I'm wondering why this sort of device is not already available like loupe type glasses that we can easily find. I'm thinking this has something to do with legislation and maximum allowed earphone sound levels? Or maybe it is too crude to be actually useful?

It is available, even as in-ear style "hearing aid", for <$10 from the usual factories. I gather it's a little problematic selling them in the US due to medical device regulations...

You can choose among hundreds of cheap "hearing aids" on Amazon.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#127

Post by newyankee » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

shariqm wrote: post #117

pontus wrote: post #84

With all the advances in tech, why does it seem that hearing aids are still from the 80s? I guess ultimately you're limited by your interface to the brain (something maybe neuralink could address?), but even still shouldn't there be some "magic" machine learning stuff going on in this space? Not at all an expert in audio processing, but I would imagine that we could do a decent job distinguishing voices from backgrou…

I agree! We're working on this at AudioFocus (YC S19). You can see an old demo here: https://www.audiofocus.io/demo There are a lot of challenges with putting this in a hearing aid: low latency inference (10ms), small power budget, consistent performance, fault tolerance, etc. Still a fair amount of R&D to be done, but change is coming.

Is it too difficult to ask for one that distributes the processes between phone/external device, rims of glasses and in the ear speaker. It will go a long way in addressing the issue of stigma and enabling more people to use it early.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#128

Post by TheRealSteel » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #70

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realtime audio is tricky without hardware acceleration.

A recent smartphone has enough hardware for that, I would think, and if it hasn’t, but the idea made sense, it would be added. If the hardware can power a GPU and a million-pixel display, it can power quite a beefy DSP, too. I would worry about the latency of a round-trip over Bluetooth. Google search tells me it’s, optimistically, 100ms single-trip, so 200ms round trip ( https://www.headphonesty.com/2020/07/fix-soun…

Can anyone who knows about Bluetooth comment on why I can ping google in 50ms (wirelessly, even), but a Bluetooth round trip over a few centimetres takes 2 - 3X that?

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#129

Post by pmayrgundter » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

madspindel wrote: post #36

rini17 wrote: post #7

Hearing aids (nor cochlear implants, for that matter) do not "restore hearing", except for light hearing loss. They are only like crutches (not even wheelchair). For example, to follow conversations or phone/skype with multiple people is very exhausting even with fancy device, because in most cases the "bandwidth" to the brain just isn't available. That said, the hearing aids vendor lock-in is really atrocious and ca…

It's because it's a medical device. The OTC Hearing Aid Act will change that so Bose (and I would guess Samsung and Apple in the future) can sell hearing aids directly to consumers. Bluetooth 5.2 LE Audio will solve the vendor lock-in. So the future looks bright for us with hearing loss. Edit: And with iOS 14 you can use AirPods Pro as hearings aids by adding an audiogram to the Apple Health app. Works really well.

My gosh, thanks for posting this! It's been very frustrating watching hearing loss affect my older family members and seeing how bad the hearing aid situation is. The OTC Act + the updated Audio spec looks like the right solution!

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#130

Post by newyankee » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #55

patorjk wrote: post #46

As an aside, there's a lot of exciting regenerative work going on related to hearing at the moment. Sometime soon we may no longer need hearing aids. There are some neat drugs either in clinical trials or about to begin clinical trials that will re-grow hair cells and broken synapses in the cochlea (ex: FX-322, OTO-413, OTO-6XX).

I am closely following FX-322, but mostly for tinnitus. I do have hearing loss, but it is that disrupting so far. But the tinnitus is something I could definitely live without.

Any other clinical trials that you can recommend ? Has the path from clinical trials to commercial launch shortened ?