Talking Hearing Loss

I was reading an post on the Living with Hearing Loss blog titled ‘How Do You Imagine The Hearing Aid Of The Future?’ which got me thinking about what features I would include if I was able to design the perfect hearing aid system.

I’ll issue a forewarning that much of what is to follow is the workings of my over active imagination (which operates well within the realms of fantasy and science fiction) and may never see the light of day. On the other hand some of it may just one day be possible.

One universal wireless standard

How great would it be to attend a movie, or the theatre or your place of worship and not have to worry about being unable to hear and understand the dialogue. How wonderful would it be to be able to understand the announcements at the airport or train station?

Now, imagine that all of this was possible without you having to do anything; that you could just walk into that movie or airport and have the sound streamed straight to your hearing aid.

If there was one universal, wireless standard that was adopted by all hearing aid manufacturers then this might be possible. Cinema complexes, theatres, churches or basically any venue that uses a public address system could make use of this technology so that it detects a compatible hearing aid upon entry of its wearer and streams the relevant audio direct to the hearing device.

Why stop there when the universal standard could be incorporated into televisions, telephones, door bells or smoke alarms so there need not be anything that we cannot hear.

From hearing aid to hearable

What if a hearing aid could do more than just help us hear? What if a hearing aid could help to save a life?

By measuring biometrics such as body temperature and pulse rate from within the ear and by incorporating positioning sensors within a hearing aid, one day maybe it could be possible to have a hearing aid that can detect if its user has fallen (sudden change in position and orientation) and is in need of medical attention (change in body temperature and pulse rate). By way of a voice prompt, the hearing aid user can be asked to respond if they do not require assistance otherwise the hearing aid (via a link to a smartphone or the internet) could send an alert to a contact list or emergency services with the user’s GPS location.

Better background noise management

How about a hearing aid that could identify the types of sounds that you don’t want to hear so that you can hear better in any environment. Better and more powerful learning algorithms would mean that the hearing aid could adapt quicker to different soundscapes.

If a hearing aid was smart enough to identify common distracting noise (like the sound of babble when many people are talking at once or the sound of traffic noise) and be able to selectively filter it out then listening in noise could be easier.

Organic hearing aids

I hate having to take my hearing aids out when I go to bed or have a shower or swim

.I would love for there to be a hearing aid which was implantable, waterproof, never had to be removed and never had to be turned off. If the hearing aid could draw its power from the biochemistry of the human body then it would never need batteries either.

IoT

I recently saw a video produced by one of the big hearing aid companies which attempted to demonstrate their conceived future direction. The video showed a gentleman waiting for his wife and daughter to return by train from their recent trip. While waiting he called his audiologist who made remote adjustments to his hearing aid settings from her office. He wanted to surprise his wife with some flowers but did not speak the same language as the florist and so his hearing aids connected to a language translation service via his smartphone. Later he needed directions to the train station and so this time his hearing aids connected to a navigation service and directions were spoken directly into his ears. At the end of the video a lot of the others watching had a laugh at the absurdity of the notion that hearing aids could ever do so much. My response was “”Well, why not??’’

In 1966, the TV program Star Trek introduced us to Communicators and Tri-corders; wireless and small handheld devices which allowed Captain Kirk to communicate with his crew mates in addition analyzing all manner of data. This was 20 years before the first flip-type mobile phone and 40 years before the first iPhone. In 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey showed a small tablet like computer, 42 years before the first iPad.

What mankind can conceive and believe, mankind can achieve. So who knows, maybe in the future we may see hearing aids that do everything I dreamed about and more. It’s going to be an exciting time.

What would you like the hearing aids of the future to be capable of? Let me know in the comments.