Phonak has announced that the material used for all custom product shell colors in its digital manufacturing process has been certified to be nontoxic and nonirritating according to independent laboratory biocompatibility testing.

In 2007 after several years of development, Phonak introduced an advanced digital manufacturing process to all major custom production centers worldwide. This process uses proprietary 3D modelling software to create a virtual custom hearing instrument. The shell is automatically constructed layer by layer from medical grade acrylic using computer-controlled UV light exposure. All equipment is rigidly calibrated and operated according to strict process quality control standards. The dimensional precision and consistency of the hearing instrument shell is clearly a main benefit of this process. But an additional advantage of Phonak’s digital manufacturing process is the mechanical stability and bio-compatibility of the shell material. For many years custom hearing instrument shells were produced using a hand-poured manual process which resulted in shells that often varied in their mechanical properties.

Phonak has worked with one of the leading producers of specialty medical grade UV-curable acrylics to develop and fine-tune eight different colors of shell materials: pink, tan, cocoa, brown, red, blue, transparent, and white. Acrylic polymers are resistant to many biological and chemical agents and demonstrate excellent impact strength, dimensional stability, chemical and scratch resistance, biocompatibility and clarity.

All Phonak custom hearing instrument shells and SlimTips produced using their digital manufacturing process have been certified to be nontoxic and a nonirritating according to independent laboratory biocompatibility testing. Phonak’s shells received a rating of “0” on a 0-4 standard cytotoxicity scale; which is completely nontoxic. They also are rated 0 – 0.4 on a clinical dermal irritation test scale, which means they produce either no or negligible skin reactions. These tests are compliant with ISO and US Food and Drug Administration Good Laboratory Practice regulations.

For more information, please visit www.phonak.com

Thank you very, very much to those of you who took the time to check out the Market site and send some feedback. Your comments have all helped to make a better site – I really appreciate you taking the time.

Testing is now over and I plan to make Hearing Aid market available to everyone from tomorrow. Any hearing aids that were listed up until now will be deleted but the users who signed up will remain.

Cheers,

Steve.

Dehumidifier pot

OK, it’s not going to be the most exciting present under the tree this year but, for the hearing aid wearer in your life, it could be one of the most useful.
Dehumidifier pots remove moisture from hearing aids, this helps prolong the life of the aid and keeps it functioning properly – and aid that it regularly popped into one of these will work longer and better.

Amazon have some of these but you can get them from your local audiologist or hearing aid seller as well.

T-Shirts

Sarah, who writes the SpeakUpLibrarian blog, has a great range of t-shirts in her online shop. She has some mugs on there too, all with fun designs for the hard of hearing.

Lip Reader

The Lip Reader novel features a colorful cast of characters—an unkempt uncle living in a school bus; a grandfather who preaches in a rundown church; a grandmother born deaf; an aunt fluent in sign language but lacking in social graces; and Sapphie, who finds courage and hope despite mother Rea’s unthinkable act of betrayal.

It was the winner of the 2008 Top Prize in Fiction at the Heart of America Christian Writers Awards.

You can purchase it in hardcopy or as an eBook from here.

A hearing test

Now, this could quite easily be the most unpopular present ever given. But for someone who is having trouble hearing and won’t go and get it checked out, it’s a great present. It’s some tough love. You’ll probably get stared at over the turkey and shouted at after a few glasses of wine in the evening but if it gives them the kick to go and see an audiologist it’ll be the best present they’ve had in a long time.

usnews.com has put together what is considers to be the 30 best careers in 2009 that offer a good outlook for the future and high job satisfaction.

They’ve selected Audiologist in their list and go on to say:

An advantage is that audiology is an under-the-radar career—few people consider it, so competition isn’t as keen as it might be. You’d think demand for audiologists would be rapidly increasing, with all the aging boomers and the increased special-education testing of children. But increasingly, lower-salaried ear technicians do much of what audiologists do. So, job growth in this small profession (13,000 people nationwide) is expected to be just average. The education requirement isn’t, however: Now, a doctor of audiology degree is required.

They also have some data on average salaries in the field:

Median (with eight years in the field): $62,200

25th to 75th percentile (with eight or more years of experience): $57,700-$81,200

Note: With the now required Au.D. and/or C.C.C.-A certifications, salaries are often $85,000 or more.

Original article via Hearing Review.

A Sacramento man paid for hearing aids he didn’t get and now the salesman has disappeared.  James Barnwell is back to using his 10-year old hearing aids.

“It’s getting harder and harder to hear where the sounds coming from.”

That’s why last February he went to River City hearing center in Fair Oaks.  Purchase agreement, he paid $3,800 and in about a month got his hearing aids.  But, he says they weren’t what he’d ordered.

“So I gave him back those, which I did it without getting any kind of receipt.”

River City owner, Steven Buonacore gave him a loaner pair until his arrived. A month went by.  He called and he visited the store.

But, that store had closed.  It took another 7 months of repeated tries for James to finally get a hold of someone at River City.  That was December, and they told him they’d call him, but they didn’t. 

“You know you’re talking about $3,800.  That’s almost $4,000.  Well now it’s going to cost me $8,000 to get hearing aids.

Read the –>original article in full.

How do you fancy getting something published on this site?

Over the years many people have left some great comments on here, there’s been some great discussions. A lot of people have taken the time to leave comments about subjects that they care about.

I get a lot of emails as well – from people who are looking for some info, want to talk about hearing aid stuff or just want to share their story.

I’m opening this to anyone: bloggers, audiologists, aid sellers, the deaf, the hard of hearing, the hearing, you, your dog, the world. Everyone is welcome, whether you’ve emailed me or commented before, have another blog or have never written anything on the Internet before, it doesn’t matter.

If you have something to say about hearing loss, hearing aids or anything around those subjects and you think you’d like to post it up on this site then I’d love to hear from you. If you want to promote your blog/product/service in your writing then that’s cool with me.

Despite all the advances in hearing technology over the past few years, a survey conducted by the Phonak Hear the World initiative has found that people still associate hearing aids with old age more than any other accessory, including wheelchairs, glasses, canes and crutches. 4,405 people, aged from 14-65 in the United Kingdom, America, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy were questioned. The top three reasons given for not wearing a hearing aid included not wanting to admit having hearing loss in public. Despite this, 93 percent responded that they would wear a hearing aid if it was necessary. “Hearing loss and the solutions available to treat it have long been misunderstood and the survey findings point to exactly that,” said Dr. Craig Kasper, chief audiology officer of Audio Hel Associates of Manhattan. “Hearing aids have come a long way and it is important to the well being of those with hearing loss that these misconceptions be addressed.”

Read on Audio Infos.

I was reading a press release today for a new hearing aid from a well-know manufacturer. It struck me that despite reading the entire thing I had absolutely no idea whether this aid would be good for me. Would it be better than the one I have? How much better? I have no idea.

The new aid has features with impressive sounding names like (and I’m making these up as I don’t want to name the brand):

Spatial Sound Matrix +

Noise Wizard 2.0

OptaEnhance

Field Spot discovery

All this on the company’s website too. From their PR and website and can get the general idea that these features let me hear better in noise, they reduce feedback, better clarity, perfect localisation, etc, etc and so on. All hearing aids do these things.

As a customer, how do I decide if one manufacturer’s Spatial Sound Matrix + feature is better than another’s OptaEnhance feature?

I can’t. I have no idea and no information to go on. The only thing I can rely on is a recommendation from a vendor or audiologist, a recommendation from a friend or some info on the web. A vendor or audiologist will only recommend products that they supply. A friend’s recommendation might be worthless as their hearing loss is probably completely different to mine. There isn’t much on the web in terms of comparison between aids.

So all these cool sounding features mean nothing to me. They have no context and they don’t help me make a choice between brand X and brand Y. I want to be able to buy a TV instead.

Hearing Industries Association has released its quarterly statistical report of U.S. hearing instrument sales for the third quarter of 2008. Based on this survey of 21 member companies, the commercial (non- Veteran’s Administration) market was down 16,345 units from the previous quarter, and down 3% when compared to the same period. VA dispensing activity continued to increase, with a 9% increase Q3 2008 over Q3 2007. Instruments sold to the VA accounted for 16% of the market this quarter. Overall, these numbers totalled a 1.23% decrease overall for the combined U.S. hearing instrument market for Q3 2008 as compared to Q3 2007, with 615,593 instruments reported as sold.This comes from Audio-Infos. I guess the decreased sales numbers are mainly due to the recession that is slowly but surely hitting most of the planet. It’ll be interesting to see if the 2009 figures are as bad or worse. Maybe, as the recession bites more in 2009, we’ll see some cheaper hearing aids as vendors fight for a share of the smaller market. We may also see some different sales models: buy-one-get-one-free or buy-now-and-pay-later and things like that.

TOP SECRET CURE FOR HEARING LOSS! LITTLE KNOWN SECRET INGREDIENT 100% GUARANTEED TO RESTORE YOUR HEARING

I’ve seen a few websites recently offering cures for hearing loss. Yes, cures. And, would you believe it, it’s so incredibly simple! Just send $29.99 and they’ll send you some tablets, a spray or some eardrops. It really is that easy.

I’m not going to link to the websites and I’m not going to name them (don’t much fancy being sued) but it’s pretty obvious that they are total horseshit. If your doctor and audiologist cannot cure your hearing loss then there’s no way a secret, magical formula from the internet is going to.

It’s tempting though, isn’t it? I even found myself wanting to believe one of the products could work for me. If you want something bad enough you are tempted to believe it’s worth a go. Don’t be fooled, if there was a cure for hearing loss then it wouldn’t be a secret formula on a handful of dodgy-looking websites, it would be a worldwide mega-seller, it would be big news.

If something looks too good to be true then it probably is. It’s frustrating to think that people might be getting hooked in by these sellers, people looking for a cheap, quick and easy option.