Results were based on a survey conducted between 28th March and 8th April 2014 of 407 Which? Connect members who had bought a hearing aid within the previous 3 years.

80 local independent retailers along with 255 national retailers made up the sample.

Customers scores were a combination of satisfaction and recommendation and the star ratings for product and pricing were based on the range of products, transparency of their pricing, clarity of information provided with them and time given to decide on products.

Staff and Service was made up of ratings of the professionalism and knowledge of staff, customer service, handling of questions and concerns plus explanations given.

AIHHP is delighted to see the latest findings from this survey, which supports the work of its’ independent members.

Chair, Duncan Collet-Fenson commented “As a group of leading hearing aid audiologists who are committed to promoting and maintaining the very highest professional and ethical standards in hearing healthcare; our aim is always to ensure that the needs of our customers are put first, without any allegiance to specific manufacturers. By being independent we can absolutely guarantee the best solution to meet our customers hearing requirements.”

Original article: http://www.aihhp.org/which-survey-independents-are-the-best-hearing-aid-providers/

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I’ve spoken to a number of audiologists and dispensers that I’ve got to know through Audiology Engine and almost all of them have recommended Phonak aids – I’ve not worn Phonak before but they said that they have a “more fullsome” sound and that it would match well to the kind of sound I have been accustomed to over the years, having started with analogue aids and kept with that analogue style of sound to some degree with my digital aids.

The Phonak Bolero range caught my eye, they have a ton of cool features that would take away some of the pain-points with my current aids, bluetooth connectivity and a bunch of gadgets you can add on. Road-noise whilst driving is a major problem for me at the moment, it is very difficult to hold a conversation in the car, I was actually quite surprised to see Phonak list “Speech In Car” as one of their features as I never considered road noise to be a common problem for hearing aid wearers, turns our we are all struggling on the road. The Bolero also has “Speech In Wind” and “WindBlock” features -the wind is another big problem for me at the moment, the wind blowing across my current aids’ microphones turns even the slightest breeze into a biblical storm.

Bluetooth connectivity isn’t something that I’ve not really bothered about up till now, I’ve just been thinking in terms of everyday hearing ability from the aids, but now I’m thinking that I am missing out, streaming my phone calls from my phone directly into my ears would be much clearer and streaming music would be cool, I don’t know but I assume you can stream the TV as well.

I decided to give the Bolero V90 a go and so I got in touch with Sam Bennett from hear4u in Leicester to see if she could fit me with them. I got to know Sam (and her team) through Audiology Engine (we built this for them) and I knew that she runs a great practice, cares about her patients and would be someone who would get the best out of any hearing aid. Sam agreed and I went to see her for a fitting last week, so I’m a few days into wearing my new aids.

Initial impressions are very positive, all of the features I mentioned above are working well for me. I will write a proper review up on here soon, when I’ve had some time to try them out in different situations. One thing that really struck me straight away was the size of the moulds compared to my NHS ones (pictures to follow) – my NHS ones are full-ear and press quite tightly against the outer ear, they were reasonably comfortable when I got used to them but it was a real pleasure to take them out at the end of the day, whereas the Phonaks have a tiny mould, with a decent-sized air vent, that fits pretty deeply into my canal and feels pretty loose, loose enough that I can pull the aid out of my ear without any friction, these are super-comfortable! I was genuinely surprised at how small the moulds were, I assumed that with my severe-profound loss a a full-ear shell would be needed to avoid feedback and with the power being output for me and the loose shell there must be feedback occurring but the feedback-suppression in the Phonaks are doing a superb job and I haven’t heard a squeak yet.

More to follow…..

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Samsung are creating quite a stir in the industry, with lots of speculation about their pending products. They have filed a number of hearing-related patents in the US, which got tongues wagging. They had a number of people attending International Hearing Aid Conference (IHCON) back in 2014 where they were apparently photographing everything and gathering as much information as the could. According to the press in Korea, they purchased $13.9M worth of hearing aid amplifiers in April 2015, which is a large order, so whatever they have planned it seems like they are going for it in a big way.

More choice and possibly ground-breaking innovation from a new player in the hearing aid market can only be a good thing for us consumers.

So what are Samsung’s hearing aids going to look like, how will they work, how will they be sold and how good will they be? No-one knows yet. Another unanswered question is whether Samsung will seek FDA approval for their devices or whether they will market them as “personal sound amplifiers” rather than medical devices, thus avoiding the regulatory process.

There are long-established hearing aid styles, namely in-the-ear and behind-the-ear, and the various flavours of each, and I would imagine Samsung will stick with the tried and tested models. I don’t expect them to come out with anything that looks radically different to what we wear today.

Samsung are the second biggest player in the smartphone market, behind Apple, so the obvious thing for them to do is to make their new hearing aid(s) work in unison with their phones. Apple already have their Made For Iphone system, which currently works with ReSound, Starkey, Beltone and some other hearing aid ranges – it is certain that Samsung will follow suit and make their latest phones and hearing aids work together. This will probably mean the best possible hearing experience on calls and when streaming music and video from your phone but will likely allow you to control your aid with your phone. I see this going much further than just being able to change the volume and programmes, I wouldn’t be surprised to see in-built hearing tests that record your audiogram on your phone, location aware hearing settings using the phone’s GPS, easy connection to a hearing professional for tuning your aids remotely, among other things. Smartphones these days are so powerful, when tightly coupled to a hearing device, the sky is the limit.

How will they be sold? That largely depends on whether Samsung get FDA approval or not. My feeling is that they will not get approval and will not sell them as medical devices, this will free them up to sell online and via other channels without the need for the patient to seek help from a hearing professional. I’m not sure whether the lack of FDA approval makes any difference to what features the devices can have, seems to me that the FDA approval controls more how you market and describe your product rather than what the product actually does: i.e. hearing aids are “medical devices” that try to “correct a hearing loss” and “are fitted for an individual’s medical condition” whereas PSAPs are more simply defined as “devices that enhance some sounds in specific situations”. I wonder if Samsung can bring a fully-functioning hearing aid to market but call it a PSAP?

Samsung’s entry into the hearing aid market will be interesting, I hope they bring some innovation with them.

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Jacoti Hearing Suite is a set of cloud-enabled mobile applications that grants anyone – from people with normal hearing to those with profound hearing losses – ubiquitous hearing support with reliability and capabilities far beyond existing and expensive hearing aids and assistive listening devices. Consumer Electronics manufacturers can license the IP-protected technologies that drive the Jacoti Hearing Suite (8 international patents, granted or pending). All Jacoti applications make use of off-the-shelf consumer hardware.

“We are thrilled that the CES Innovation Awards have honored the advanced hearing compensation and enhancement technology in Jacoti Hearing Suite which enables hearing without barriers,” said Jacques Kinsbergen, CEO of Jacoti bvba.

Jacoti believes that hearing loss compensation and personalization of audio should be a fundamental part of all audio-enabled computing devices. Hearing loss is both a medical condition and a consumer challenge. Therefore, it needs consumer-driven and consumer-oriented solutions.

Jacoti Hearing Suite consists of the following interconnectable hearing applications:

• Jacoti Hearing Center is a revolutionary, patented self-test hearing application that provides clinically reliable results in real-life environments.
• Jacoti ListenApp® is the first medically certified hearing aid application.
• Jacoti Lola® Classroom is a flexible and affordable assistive listening solution for classrooms, meeting rooms and lecture halls. It provides extremely low-latency multi-peer audio streaming over consumer-grade Wi-Fi. Jacoti Lola makes ubiquitous hearing assistance practical anywhere and by anyone who has difficulties understanding speech in a noisy environment including students with hearing loss, children with learning disabilities, or even students with normal hearing.
• myJacoti is a web service that allows users to store their audio profiles in the cloud, share them across devices, and connect to a remote Hearing Expert for remote fitting assistance.

Jacoti Hearing Suite is a concrete solution that is on the forefront of the shift from a product-based to a user-centered services model in hearing health. In a recent report on untreated mild to moderate age-related hearing loss, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) foresees:

“…many opportunities for both incremental and disruptive improvements in assistive hearing technologies, none of which should be intrinsically expensive in a competitive market. In the near future, people could check their hearing using automated hearing tests available on-line or through common smart devices. Interfaces between smart devices and users could allow adaptive self-fitting by devices in response to user needs.”

Jacoti Hearing Suite will be displayed at CES Unveiled (CES unveiled is part of CES) and Jacoti bvba will be exhibiting at CES 2016, which runs January 6-9, 2016, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

About Jacoti

Jacoti bvba is a privately held hearing technology company with offices in Wevelgem, Belgium and in Barcelona, Spain. Jacoti’s mission is to bring advanced hearing technology in reach of large populations with a special focus on children during their education.

Jacoti bvba http://www.jacoti.com.

SOURCE Jacoti bvba

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Video captioning by itself oversimplifies the matter and fails many Deaf people. To provide better user experiences for the Deaf, we need to stop thinking of deafness as simply the inverse of hearing — we need to understand deafness from both a cultural and linguistic perspective. Moreover, to enhance the online user experience for the deaf, we must understand how deafness influences web accessibility.”

The above is a snippet from an excellent article about website accessibility for the deaf and hard of hearing, it is written by Lisa Herrod, you can read it in full on the A List Apart site.

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Charles Lewis and his family have been working in audiology for over 43 years and draw upon that experience to give great advice and help to locals looking for hearing aids, tinnitus treatment, hearing testing and earwax removal.

They have a nice rehabilitation programme (or journey as they call it), which is detailed here, to help you get used to your new hearing aids and get the most from them. It is care like this, from initial fitting of an aid, through the first months of wearing them, and afterwards that really helps people to get the full benefit from an aid.

They stock the Starkey, Widex, ReSound, Unitron, Phonak and Lyric hearing aid ranges so their should be something to fit anyone’s hearing needs and budget.

If you are local, I recommend you check them out.

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Begin by immersing yourself in this culture. Throughout your education, attend the related seminars that the university offers. Finally, check the university’s online listing of jobs and internships frequently to find ways to get more experience. This will help you determine exactly what you want to achieve.

Bachelor’s in Communicative Disorders

Some universities, such as Utah State University, offer an undergraduate degree in communicative disorders that may be completed either on campus or online. If you choose to pursue your degree online, it is important to research the licensing laws and job market for your individual location before entering the program, as they vary widely by area. Entry into a communicative disorders degree will likely require a minimum GPA, so watch all of your grades carefully.

Although a BA or BS will be adequate education to work as a clinical aide, many undergraduate degrees are largely designed to prepare you for graduate work in audiology or speech-language pathology. Due to the clinical nature of these fields, you will need to study anatomy and physiology, so be sure you have a firm grasp of life sciences.

Bachelor’s in Deaf Education

A BA or BS in deaf education prepares you to be a teacher, not a clinician. Therefore, you must emphasize sign language skills to effectively instruct your students. In addition, you will need to take classes about teaching methods.

Doctorate of Audiology

The field of audiology is expected to grow by 34% over the next decade, so it is a wise goal if you feel it is a good fit for you. You can choose between earning a regular PhD or an AuD. An AuD will emphasize the use of hearing aids, cochlear implants, and other listening devices. You will learn about these exciting advances in science through practical experience, where you will get a firsthand view of the immensely positive impact your work in this field can do.

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In response to a HearingHealthMatters articles about this partnership, Sonova’s Michael Issac confirmed that Walgreens stores in Dallas, Phoenix, Orlando and Chicago had been selected for the trial. He also said that no decision had been made as to whether a wider rollout would take place.

Having a hearing care centre in high-street stores is common here in the UK – the Boots pharmacy chain have a large number of shops with a hearing aid dispenser section, which are run by Sonova. Specsavers, traditionally a glasses dispenser, also have a large number of stores with an in-house audiologist and have a competitively-priced selection of white label haring aids branded as their own (I believe they are Phonak but don’t know for sure).

Sonova had previously partnered with Costco but that didn’t go so well for them and they ended up posting lower profits and annoying independent hearing aid dispensers, their traditional sales outlet. It is interesting that they are trying again and it is possibly a nod towards the future of hearing aid purchasing.

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As it turns out, audiologists, medical professionals who treat hearing and balance problems, don’t have it so bad.

BLS projects the profession is expected to experience a 34% boost in jobs between 2012 and 2022. The median salary for audiologists is a stable $69,720. The projected growth is likely a reflection of the fact that as the nation ages — the over-65 population is expected to double by 2050 — the need for doctors who specialize in addressing that community’s ailments will only grow. And given millennials’ and youngsters’ tendency to blast music into their earbuds, which is partly to blame to the increasing levels of hearing loss among young Americans, the need for folks who can help us hear better will only grow.

Originally from TIME magazine.

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Why we went to Hearing Direct

Mum has been wearing a pair of Oticon Spirits supplied by the NHS for a few years. She had two problems with these: She wasn’t particularly happy with wearing visible behind-the-ear hearing aids and she had recently had minor surgery to remove a growth from the outer part of one of her ears, which meant she could not wear one of the aids without it slipping off hear ear.

I had been wanting to see how the experience of buying hearing aids online worked for someone for a while but I am well outside of the fitting range of most online suppliers myself. I suggested to Mum she went through Hearing Direct as she could get a pair of in-the-ears for a decent price and she wouldn’t have to visit somewhere to get them fitted (which was something she wasn’t particularly keen on).

The order

Mum spoke on the phone to one of Hearing Direct’s in-house audiologists to determine which of their aids would be best for her, they decided on a pair of HD 390 aids. Hearing Direct either supply aids pre-programmed for “the most common hearing loss” or they can program a unit to an audiogram – Mum didn’t have a copy of her last audiogram handy, which would be quite out of date anyway, so the HD 390s were programmed for a common loss based on her age, the environments she wanted to hear in and also the fact that she had been a hearing aid wearer already.

The Delivery

About two days later we received the aids. Inside the box were the aids themselves, some batteries, instruction sheets, replacement wax guards, rubber domes and a hard-shell carry case that can be used to keep the aids in whilst they are not in ears.

The aids were ready to go, we just needed to put the batteries in and pop them into ears. The rubber domes are optional and can be fitted onto the ends of the aids to make them more comfortable or to eliminate any feedback, Mum was happy without the domes and wasn’t getting any feedback. I did try and put the domes on, just to see how they fitted, and had a hard time trying to get them to stay on, but we didn’t need them anyway, so no problem.

There are some instructional videos on the Hearing Direct website that show you how to insert one of their aids, how to change the battery and how to clean them. These videos are really helpful and need to be watched, they do a far better job of explaining how to use them than the supplied instructions do, it is easier to watch an aid being put in and taken out than it is to read it being described.

Putting them in

Mum was used to fairly bulky behind-the-ear aids so putting in a small in-the-ear was a bit fiddly to begin with – after a few days this became second nature and the colour-coding on each unit (red for right, blue for left) makes it easy to get the correct aid into the correct ear.

Taking them out was also a little fiddly at first. Each aid has a small wire coming out of it, which is used to pull it out of the ear. The wire is needed as the unit fits snuggly into the ear canal and goes far enough in that you would not have anything to grab onto without the wire. The end of the wire sits at the bottom of her ear and is just about visible if you are staring hard enough at her ear.

Listening

This was the real make-or-break point, did the aids help her hear better? In short, yes! She initially found them too loud, which is common when people are putting new aids in but after a few days she was used to the new sounds and not experiencing any sounds that were too loud. I was a little concerned that the aids may have been over-amplifying for her seeing as they were programmed to the common hearing loss and not hers specifically but after that initial period she is getting on with the sound level swimmingly.

I tried various tests with her to see how well she was hearing with the HD 390s in. I banged on a table while someone else talked to her (a repetitive background noise that the aid should suppress easily), she understood the speaker easily. We had her facing a TV whilst someone spoke to her from behind her at quite a distance away, again she heard the speaker OK, the TV was not especially loud but it was a good test of her ability to pick up sounds from behind with noise in front. We tried having many people speaking or making noise at the same time while she tried to understand what one of us was saying, this is a challenging environment for any hearing aid as the background noise is not a uniform sound that can be easily suppressed and it is also voices, which is what the user is wanting to hear, she heard OK with this test, she could understand what the person was saying but it was difficult, but I would expect this of any hearing aid.

She finds the telephone easier to use now. Having an in-the-ear aid means you can hold the phone at a much more natural position, i.e. actually on your ear, whereas with a behind-the-ear you have to hold the phone to the hearing aid’s speaker, which is at the very top of your ear. She hears much more on the phone but she does still like to go to a quiet room or turn down the TV to reduce background noise for calls.

Outcome

One happy customer! The in-the-ear HD390s are working extremely well for Mum. After a few days of learning how to get them in and out and changing the battery she is using them as comfortably as she did her BTEs, despite them being much smaller (the image above shows the difference in size). She is happier that they are less visible. She says the sound quality is better than her old aids and she can hear more with them and everyone around her is noticing that too, we don’t repeat ourselves so often and she is clearly more engaged in group conversations than she was before. I was slightly skeptical of using a pair of hearing aids that were programmed for a common loss rather than an individual hearing loss pattern but this is working very well for Mum. She has got a no-fuss pair of hearing aids delivered in a couple of days that has improved her hearing ability and made her happier.

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