Q: iPhone to Replace Hearing Aids
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Jun 24, 2016 5:45 AMby OldGnome,That is indeed a provocative thought and one well worth discussing. I have a couple of counterpoints that are not necessarily my own, but ones that any enterprising individual or organization will have to get past in order to bring about the revolution you seek.
- Hearing aids are medical devices. They are programmed by highly trained individuals. In my case, I pay for all of my audiologist appointments with the purchase of my hearing aids. I'm pretty sure that an app worth the going rate for iPhone apps isn't going to have the fine degree of control those of us with hearing disabilities require.
- Hearing aids do more than simply increase the volume in a straight-line fashion. I have gotten to the point where I can visually recognize my hearing loss graph amongst others. I use a music app on my iPhone called SoundFocus that is trained to my particular hearing disability to provide a correct balance of frequencies when I am listening with headphones or through the speakers on my desk. Would that work for sound being carried through the iPhone's microphone?
- The microphone on the iPhone is not very sophisticated and is not intended to pick up a full range of sound and deliver it with high fidelity, at least it cannot deliver with the fidelity provide by my Starkeys. Any sound captured by the microphone on the iPhone picks up all sound very near the microphone fairly well, but much less well as distance from the microphone increases. Witness any video taken with an iPhone. Without capture processing, background sounds are more prominent than they should be.
- It is far too easy to induce additional hearing damage with the volumes capable when listening to anything through earbuds or headphones.
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Jun 24, 2016 6:28 AMby Joe RS,All good points OldGnome however as good as the hearing aid industry has become over a long period of time it is still mainly catering to one group of hearing aid wearer which is older aged hard of hearing persons. For someone that is younger and more tech savvy this industry is moving slowly for them.
I have also come to the conclusion that not all audiologists are equal in their talents or abilities. There are more bad audiologists then there are good ones. Fortunately I have found a really good audiologist and it's only because I can tell the difference between a good and not so good one that I am with that particular person. Most people going to an audiologist for the first time likely have no idea of the difference and they will have a very poor experience with hearing aids.
One of the major arguments for the hearing industry to be controlled by a segment of the medical field is to protect people so they do not further damage their hearing by over amplifying sound. That argument is fairly weak when you consider that any person putting earbuds in their ears and cranking the volume of their music are doing damage to their ears. Where is the regulation for them? So on the one hand those who need amplification are regulated and those who do not don't. That's kind of silly. I understand that amplification is an oversimplification of the issues for hearing impaired people but like you, I probably know more about sound and the issues related to hearing than most people simply because it's an important topic for me.
The microphone issue is certainly valid but it wouldn't take much to change that. iPhones are currently offered in several models, perhaps a model with higher quality and multiple microphones could be offered?
If Apple was interested in pursuing this market I would be their most enthusiast customer. Given Apple's track record in technology I am certain they would do a great job. They have the resources to get the best people in the business and the technology clout to make this happen.
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Jun 24, 2016 6:41 AMby OldGnome,Again, not all my points are my personal opinions, but potential arguments one would have to answer in the face of market forces.
A couple of remarks on your reply --
- Picking a good audiologist is like picking a good provider of any service. If you don't do your research, you might get burned. That the service provider in our case is an audiologist doesn't change that equation for me.
- My 23 year-old daughter is fully on board with the idea of hearing aids and wears them. One caveat is that she was culturally acclimated to the idea of hearing aids through my family - my father, his siblings, his parents, some of my cousins and some of their children were wearing hearing aids when she was growing up. I'm pushing 60 and I am about as tech savvy as any Millenial. I'm still a fairly early adopter when it comes to new technology. Price, more than interest prevents most extended new tech forays these days. Therefore, I'm not sure your age characterizations are entirely valid.
- Based on some minor experience with sound systems and gear used by bands, good microphones are not inexpensive. Good, small microphones are more expensive than good, large microphones. To reduce a high quality microphone to a size suitable to an iPhone footprint might be an expensive and lengthy technological challenge. I'm not a sound engineer or electrical design engineer, and while miniaturization of high quality audio components has made excellent progress, the size requirements of an iPhone microphone make that technological leap an order of magnitude more difficult. Not impossible, but potentially prohibitively expensive.
- Regarding regulation/control of/by the medical field and your assessment that it is silly: Of course it is. Next question?
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Jun 24, 2016 6:52 AMby Joe RS,Regarding the cost of miniaturized microphones:
I did some casual research on the actual costs associated with the hardware inside modern hearing aids and I was very surprised at the component costs. They are not so high as you would think. By the time that hearing aid has reached the consumer at the retail level it has been marked up significantly. It's also likely that Apple has good purchasing clout.
If Apple doesn't do this then someone else will. There are already 'hearing assistant devices' on the market that do not fall under the medical devices scrutiny. You can buy these things online. They are currently very low end devices.
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Jul 19, 2016 12:00 PMby Joe RS,Thanks for jumping in on the discussion fmhanc.
I did do a search and found some interesting apps.
I also found this article online: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/3-free-iphone-apps-that-help-you-hear
My brother tried out the one called BioAid from that add and didn't like it at all.
But all things start somewhere before they get better.
OldGnome has a good point about the quality of the microphone in the iPhone. It would be nice to have an engineer compare the quality and the costs of the microphones in a good hearing aid and the ones in the iPhone. I wonder if I can find someone to do that for us. I'd donate an iPhone 5 to the cause. :-)
