Question
How do you define hearing aid personalization, and why is that important to hearing aid wearers?
Answer
Personalization could be many things, from the color of the hearing aid to the sound. Color is a fairly easy choice for a hearing aid wearer to make, but when it comes to sound personalization, the availability of sound controls can complicate decision making. Hearing happens in real life and real life is changing around us. Giving hearing aid wearers this type of personalization is challenging, not only because controls have become more complex, but also because environments are dynamic.
We wanted to allow hearing-aid wearers to have a simple way to make minor changes to the sound in the moment, yet not undermine the skilled fitting made by the clinician. Just making small and temporary adjustments for that moment could make a significant difference in the listening experience of our end users.
In doing so, we empower the hearing aid wearer. We let them help themselves in real-life situations by making change to the sound. In doing so, we have seen significant improvements in subjective rating of sound quality. We have also had reports of wearers telling us they hear speech better. This could either be the result of increased comfort with the overall sound, or that they have improved the sound settings themselves through SoundSense Learn. Either way, we are excited to see the power of personalization and the effect this has on how people hear with Widex EVOKE.
This Ask the Expert is an excerpt from the interview, Evolve with Evoke: The World's First Real-Time Machine Learning Hearing Aid.
