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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

#351

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

jrace wrote: post #128

How much would you pay for: *Hearing test * Hearing aid fitting * Usage counselling * Follow up adjustments * Annual retest of your hearing * Replacement of lost hearing aids * Unlimited repair for 3 years ?? ====== I got out of the Audiology field in 2015. At that time all the above was included for every hearing aid we sold (Prices varied from $750 / ear - $3600 / ear. When I was in that field many companies tried…

My wife's grandfather should have all of that through his VA, Medicare, and supplimental insurance. His hearing aids are the most annoying low quality overpriced pieces of crap you can imagine. And that stupid headphone amplifier thing they've sold him, garbage, literal garbage. A hobbyist could do better.

The new schema may not be a panacea but I don't expect it to be worse than the status quo.

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

#352

Post by sonicggg »

worik wrote: post #347

I tread that article, hoping it would explain why, in the giddy universe, would it ever have been a good idea to require prescriptions for hearing aids? Perhaps I missed it....

Health insurance coverage is a good one. Don't know any insurance that covers OTC equipment.

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

#353

Post by heavyset_go »

comeonseriously wrote: post #211
KennyBlanken wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evaluating someone's eye for glasses can be done entirely by machine as can manufacturing the glasses themselves. I do not understand why we still force people to spend 5-10 minutes sitting in a chair in a dark room going "better....no...worse...better..."

Because an eye exam isn't just about the final prescription. It's about whole eye health (retina health, cancer, cholesterol, diabetes, etc).

This is important. Eye exams are not just the part where they have you look at letters on the wall in the dark.

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

#354

Post by FPGAhacker »

dmurray wrote: post #160
jrace wrote: post #128

How much would you pay for: *Hearing test * Hearing aid fitting * Usage counselling * Follow up adjustments * Annual retest of your hearing * Replacement of lost hearing aids * Unlimited repair for 3 years ?? ====== I got out of the Audiology field in 2015. At that time all the above was included for every hearing aid we sold (Prices varied from $750 / ear - $3600 / ear. When I was in that field many companies tried…

I've long thought the problem with hearing aids is the calibration process. People (often old, confused, and less tech-familiar) try them on and spend half an hour answering questions about "does that sound better?" What if, instead, the calibration process worked constantly? Give the user a button to press when they don't hear something well, and another when they do. Let them have this for a month, let them try it…

There are actually a good reasons not to do this. A very large part of your hearing is brain training...your brain learning how to interpret the new stimulus it is getting. You need to give your brain time to adapt to new stimulus before evaluating whether you are hearing better or not. If you are constantly fiddling with your hearing aids, you never get the benefit of training.

This may not apply if your hearing loss was sudden, but many people get hearing aids only after years of decline. Your brain adapts to what it has available and you learn to hear as best you can with the limited stimulus. When you finally get hearing aids, it feels like your ears have been unblocked.

When it comes to interpreting speech though, especially in noisy circumstances, you have to give it time. Your brain isn't used to using the extra stimulus to interpret speech. In fact, it may have gotten used to hearing loss filtering out background noise and you may initially find all the stimulus makes it harder to interpret speech because of all the background noise you now hear that you previously didn't.

If you don't have patience and start immediately futzing with volume all the time, you never give your brain a chance to adapt, and will be very dissatisfied.

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

#355

Post by rkagerer »

dmurray wrote: post #160
jrace wrote: post #128

How much would you pay for: *Hearing test * Hearing aid fitting * Usage counselling * Follow up adjustments * Annual retest of your hearing * Replacement of lost hearing aids * Unlimited repair for 3 years ?? ====== I got out of the Audiology field in 2015. At that time all the above was included for every hearing aid we sold (Prices varied from $750 / ear - $3600 / ear. When I was in that field many companies tried…

I've long thought the problem with hearing aids is the calibration process. People (often old, confused, and less tech-familiar) try them on and spend half an hour answering questions about "does that sound better?" What if, instead, the calibration process worked constantly? Give the user a button to press when they don't hear something well, and another when they do. Let them have this for a month, let them try it…

All audio devices used to have an instant-feedback feature like this. You could dial it in with zero latency. Early technosapiens called it the Volume knob :-).

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

#356

Post by babarganesh »

ddlutz wrote: post #221
slownews45 wrote: post #181

Fantastic news. If you can afford the $5,000 - great! The current system works for you. 80% of people cannot and so are stuck. For folks with mild/moderate loss (where a LOT of people don't get help) something as simple as letting Apple tweak noise cancellation to be voice enhancing and providing a tuning and hearing test app in the iphone would be a godsend. The elderly miss out on a lot of family life because of he…

This is me. 28, had mild hearing loss for about 3 years now in one ear due to a bad ear infection. I can get by fine, however I'm definitely missing out on a lot of "richness" of sound. I can't hear high pitched noises, or subtle differences between noises in my left ear at all. And everything in general is a little muted. Since I can hear perfectly find out of my right ear I'm not convinced spending thousands of dol…

i'd pay way more than 100k for a tinnitus cure. it would be worth significantly delaying retirement for. but there's nothing on the horizon. and yes, i have adapted to it well enough that it doesn't cause me anxiety and don't notice it 98% of the time. i just miss pure hearing.

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

#357

Post by soylentnewsorg »

EastOfTruth wrote: post #198
dmurray wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long thought the problem with hearing aids is the calibration process. People (often old, confused, and less tech-familiar) try them on and spend half an hour answering questions about "does that sound better?" What if, instead, the calibration process worked constantly? Give the user a button to press when they don't hear something well, and another when they do. Let them have this for a month, let them try it…

> What if, instead, the calibration process worked constantly? Give the user a button to press when they don't hear something well, and another when they do. On TVs, they call those buttons volume buttons, it is revolutionary.

...which will simply make you more deaf. hearing aids do not simply amplify volume. you know, because they're not headphones and a microphone.

but your idea is great too. if you can't hear one frequency, let's amplify all frequencies till the one you need gets loud enough, and go deaf to the other ones in a year. when you get old and need a hearing aid, you should stick with your method.

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

#358

Post by mgerdts »

jrace wrote: post #128

How much would you pay for: *Hearing test * Hearing aid fitting * Usage counselling * Follow up adjustments * Annual retest of your hearing * Replacement of lost hearing aids * Unlimited repair for 3 years ?? ====== I got out of the Audiology field in 2015. At that time all the above was included for every hearing aid we sold (Prices varied from $750 / ear - $3600 / ear. When I was in that field many companies tried…

What you describe is almost as good as the deal anyone can get from Costco in the US.

The return period is 6 months, I think. You also get one free replacement in the first 3 years if it is lost or chewed up by your dog.

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

#359

Post by jjk166 »

falcolas wrote: post #334
jjk166 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make them unsafe. Plenty of devices can damage your hearing but are still perfectly safe to operate. I fail to see how adequate directions for use could not be prepared.

How do you know when something is too loud without measuring it? If your answer is "ringing ears", you've already incurred at least some hearing damage. Do you have the tools to measure how loud your headphones are? I don't. And so I keep them as low as I can. Is there a limiter in amplifying headphones to keep them from going above a certain threshold (like 80Db)?

Why would you be trying to find the point at which it is too loud? The goal is to amplify things to the point that you can hear them clearly, not to go beyond that.

Also hearing aids have manual volume control which a licensed professional has no influence over, so that doesn't really make sense as a justification for limiting availability.

It's certainly possible to apply volume limiting to headphones, though again the people using amplifying headphones typically are dealing with the opposite problem.

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

#360

Post by bradknowles »

ansgri wrote: post #307
mschuster91 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> features such as protecting your ears against a sudden loud noise Reminds me of the Artemis Fowl series or the first Iron Man, awesome to see former science fiction coming closer to reality. Adaptive ear protection in real life would be really interesting on construction sites or for musicians...

These seem to exist for quite some time, like https://www.etymotic.com/product/gun-sport-pro/

I want something a bit more selective. Like, capable of completely blocking out the sound of my wife snoring.

I’m sure that I’m not the only one in this boat, but I may be one of the rare males complaining about their wife snoring.

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