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$1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

sciencemag.org

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

#131

Post by paulcarroty »

caymanjim wrote: post #73

This is not a $1 hearing aid and never will be. The material cost of almost any device is insignificant compared to the overall cost of manufacturing, testing, and distributing it. The barrier to low-cost hearing aids in most countries is medical regulation and liability coverage, not expensive parts. Maybe India's regulations are lax enough that someone could bulk-manufacture cheap, poorly-tested medical devices to…

> if there were a viable market, it would already be manufactured. There's no profit to be made, so why would anyone bother?

Big market, not super-complex tech, it's only matter of time when cheap solution comes.

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

#133

Post by newyankee »

snegu wrote: post #85
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).

Are any of these supposed to work on congenital hearing loss, or only when hearing loss is caused by damage/age?

In theory i believe if regeneration of cells is involved it should work with congenital but i guess there might be other complexities that might be involved (not a medical professional).

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

#134

Post by rajandatta »

tobtoh wrote: post #90
SeasonalEnnui wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple-decades of hearing aid wearing here. I agree with most of that. I ended up buying the programmer for my aids to do small tweaks (not the prescription/audiogram, just the program configuration where you can edit the level of DSP in various situations). I would say that this latest generation of hearing aids (Phonak Marvel) is the first generation where I've felt like they've got it right. Direct bluetooth con…

I'm about to trial a replacement for my current HA (about 5 years old) for the Phonak Paradise (the just released successor to the Marvel). The bluetooth connectivity has been a big reason why I want to upgrade - the work from home situation this year with constant phone calls and Zoom meeting requiring headsets has been a constant annoyance. I use an Airpod in my right ear and leave one HA in my left for those situa…

Whats your view of the Phonak aids? As a user, would you say they are worth the money?

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

#135

Post by pkaye »

ritchiea wrote: post #10

Too bad we live in the kind of world where the biggest hearing aid manufacturer will read this, raise additional capital, buy the patent & rights to the $1 hearing aid and then sell hearing aids for $5,000 each they'll bill to medicare and big health insurance co.

You can already buy cheap amplifiers like this on Amazon.

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

#136

Post by newyankee »

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…

Honestly what is needed is a cheap secondary device like a mobile phone which contains a custom designed chip to do Machine learning fast on sound and transmit it to the ear. Even if this costs 500 $ i would reckon the benefit would be worth it. I guess battery technology has advanced to a level that the said device can easily be recharged daily or probably swapped with batteries if needed.

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

#137

Post by pmayrgundter »

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…

See madspindel's comment above ^^^ about Bluetooth 5.2 LE Audio and this:

LE Audio: Announced in January 2020 at CES by the Bluetooth SIG, LE Audio will run on the Bluetooth Low Energy radio lowering battery consumption, and allow the protocol to carry sound and add features such as one set of headphones connecting to multiple audio sources or multiple headphones connecting to one source It uses a new LC3 codec. BLE Audio will also add support for hearing aids.

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

#138

Post by pkaye »

subhashp wrote: post #24

My mother has been wearing Hearing Aids for over 20 years. These days she has trouble with hearing what is on TV even with a powerful hearing aid. Most times she just sits quietly in front of the TV watching moving pictures. I have always wondered why it is so difficult to make hearing aid which can be connected to a bluetooth enabled TV or Mobile phone, so senior citizens can watch TV or talk to their loved one. Wha…

There are bluetooth enabled hearing aids. Also you can get normal headphones with bluetooth capability. I have 60dB hearing loss and use the bluetooth headphones from time to time both with and without my hearing aids.

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

#139

Post by lostlogin »

ygjb wrote: post #110
mdw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a brightly coloured hearing aid as an adult doesn’t look professional. Are these marketed towards younger people?

This is your opinion. In many parts of the world, criticizing a piece of accessibility equipment as unprofessional is likely an HR violation, and probably grounds for termination.

It is and you are correct. It’s not unreasonable for someone to want a more neutral colour if that is their preference though. Some HA users are self conscious and hide that they are wearing them.

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

#140

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

This is nice, I was looking at this problem a while back and was wondering whether implementing sound amplification features on cheap TWS earphones can solve that[1], of course it wouldn't be $1 and I wonder whether the latency of BLE would defeat its purpose.

[1] https://needgap.com/problems/22-enabling-hearing-aid-feature...

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