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The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

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Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#281

Post by TaylorAlexander »

bluGill wrote: post #266
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess one question is: do those things have to cost thousands of dollars? What are the primary cost components? Are the people doing these jobs highly paid? Are they highly paid because of high costs of college tuition? Would free college help lower their costs?

> I guess one question is: do those things have to cost thousands of dollars? No. Hunters (and shooters) have been buying electronic ear protection for years at much lower prices. There is no FDA approval, and they are not needed so the manufactures have to compete. The result is hearing aids in everything but the FDA approval. Some people find they work better than hearing aids because the manufactures have to tune…

These are good points. I was wondering about the costs of the doctor's visits, but you're right we should perhaps make those optional.

I realized one thing that would help is "open hardware". If you're supposed to see a doctor to measure and tune some value maybe a device with an open interface and an app would suffice (which I think others here mentioned today).

The reason I asked about the cost of the doctor is I am interested in doing things like giving them free school in order to lower their need to charge high prices. Generally I would rather every person has a good local doctor they can see for free, but we could also deregulate these devices and let people sort out amongst themselves how to get the right fit. I would just want to take care that people aren't damaging their hearing further with improper use.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#282

Post by coupdejarnac »

tpmx wrote: post #242
coupdejarnac wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going through this right now. I know I probably need a cpap machine, so paying $300 out of pocket to rent a stupid device to record my sleep seems like a waste.

Well, at least you're doing it. Crude but realistic: There is a pretty high number of (often but not always overweight) undiagnosed/untreated people suffering from obstructive sleep apnea on the roads every day. They are causing a number of avoidable accidents every day. I think it's criminal to make CPAP as unaccessible as it is in the US.

Not to mention lost productivity. I wonder what the dollar amount for my lost productivity over my lifetime due to poor sleep would be. Probably very high.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#283

Post by jrace »

robocat wrote: post #263
RHSeeger wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the time it's not absolute volume. If you can't hear certain frequency ranges well, boosting the volume of all ranges is just going to drown out the ones you can't hear well.

Do any hearing aids frequency shift, or compress the frequency scale (e.g. just higher frequencies compressed down to lower frequencies so that voice tone stays constant and sibilants get shifted down into hearing range).

yes, I know Phonak hearing aids were doing that since about 2012. For some of our more severe hearing impaired patients it was a noticeable improvement in speech comprehension.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#285

Post by fn-mote »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #92
mbg721 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vision checks have also changed a lot in the last five years or so. I have a pretty strong prescription and always used to do rounds of reading charts and "A or B", and now there's a machine that scans my eyes and gets it very close to right, with an adjustment or two at the end.

12 years ago, I walked into a second hand eye glasses shop in India and they had one of these machines. It was amazingly effective. I felt duped by all the optometrist appointments asking me about A or B.

To me, the tradeoff of an expensive modern machine vs an cheaper iterative process seems logical. I think it's funny that a second hand shop has the fancy equipment... but they must know it sells glasses more effectively.

Here, the machine results are used as a starting point, validated by A/B but I don't know if the human part is effective or just theater.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#286

Post by buildsjets »

bckygldstn wrote: post #174
throaway46546 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it amusing that none of those are in the EU.

Yeah, I mean EU as in EUrope, not EU as in The European Union.

Neither Canada nor New Zealand are in EUrope.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#287

Post by wbl »

dqv wrote: post #66
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the doctor leaves their signature off the prescription so that it is effectively useless.

This is just a general thing I've learned from working adjacent to US healthcare... It's annoying to work with and there are all kinds of little rules because of how inefficient the system is. First, always have a list of all relevant phone numbers (at a minimum, but other information is helpful too) to any healthcare entity you need to work with. Your primary care doctor, your pharmacy, your hospital, your preferred…

Or use kaiser.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#288

Post by slownews45 »

falcolas wrote: post #235
slownews45 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you are CERTAIN that the iphone could not a) conduct a hearing test b) do a hearing based EQ on incoming sound? c) do sound profiles (ie, optimize for speech?) Realize that calling already may use some of this - using microphones to pick out speech from background noise etc. For folks who have hearing issues you could have one device that would cover your movie watching, your phone calls, and hearing enhancement.…

> conduct a hearing test It could not. A hearing test requires an environment with exceptional isolation and flat-response drivers (iPods are not remotely flat) to be done properly. > do a hearing based EQ on incoming sound It could, given a proper prescription for the EQ, and an understanding of the response curve of the iPods' mic and drivers. > do sound profiles Not required, the EQ is tied to your hearing damage,…

I've got a higher end audio setup, I can put the sound calibration mic in the listening position etc (think YPAO / Audyssey etc). But you get little weird sync issues at times between sources / displays etc.

On a whim I tried Apple's wireless sync. It's end to end, and works as well as I could with manual tuning (which I would do by filming at high speed a time audio sync track)

https://www.reddit.com/r/appletv/comments/itm711/psa_wireles...

So they demonstrated a consumer device could, in a few seconds, generate a fantastic sync solution across my entire input -> output -> room stack. Or I could spend an hour fiddling around in settings.

Airpod pro's provide a some level of isolation already especially if you run the fit check. airpods are also not that bad.

You could do a calibration curve at factory if needed for drivers. You could run a very user friendly process to fine tune, in the comfort of your own home, a profile of your hearing loss. You could update this anytime.

You could then also obviously offer some presets to amplify things in a targeted way. At the dinner table? Focus on voices. At a concert, do a music preset.

We've heard all this before with camera's by the way. The iphone doesn't have a "real camera". Yes, I used to shoot full frame. Yes, the iphone's cameras are "crap". But for many people they are "good enough", and they have other benefits, ease of use, easy to learn, not a big extra expense etc.

Let the market decide, apple can provide a warning -> if you want to wait for insurance to approve a hearing test, then schedule one, then wait for a device to be ordered and ship, then go back, then be dependent on an audiologist to tune things for you etc you should do so, but if you want, try out little app here to see if it helps.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#289

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Cautionary tale: Opticians

I went for an eyetest. A woman with 3 years post-grad training sat down for 45 minutes, ran a battery of tests, detected a bacterial infection in my eye, sent me for a hospital appointment the next day, and gave me a prescription that I filled out online. My payment to her - 25 quid.

I did get her some chocolates to say thank you.

Now name another (para-)medical area where the medical part is a loss leader for the rest? (I am worried i will hear a lot of Americans ...)

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#290

Post by jrace »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #289

Cautionary tale: Opticians I went for an eyetest. A woman with 3 years post-grad training sat down for 45 minutes, ran a battery of tests, detected a bacterial infection in my eye, sent me for a hospital appointment the next day, and gave me a prescription that I filled out online. My payment to her - 25 quid. I did get her some chocolates to say thank you. Now name another (para-)medical area where the medical part…

In Canada I did the very same, but for free.

Free hearing evaluation, discovered ear infections, referred back to GP. At no time was I compensated by the client or the government.

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