Starkey are poised to launch their Destiny hearing aid in India by November 2007. This news comes from the ExpressHealthcare website – they are reporting that the Destiny will be sold for up to 50,000 Rupees, which according to XE.com, is around £650.

From ExpressHealthcare on Starkey’s move into the Indian market:

The biggest concern is that there are not many qualified audiologists in India and hence awareness is low. Said Rohit Misra, Managing Director, Starkey, “Compared to the Western countries, the number of qualified audiologists is abysmally low. We have just around 1,200 professionals for a country of billion people. Hence, awareness needs to be stepped up.”

Professor Anthony Wright talks about mp3 players and hearing loss, analogue and digital hearing aids, the NHS and future research into hearing loss.

An interview with Prof Wright

Hammersmith & Fulham Council is one of the first London boroughs to introduce an innovative new video relay service for deaf residents who prefer to use British Sign Language (BSL).

Residents can now use interactive video screens in two council receptions to communicate with a BSL interpreter. The interpreter then relays their message live to council staff before signing the response back to the deaf resident.

Deaf resident Natalie Drytchak, who tried out the new system with the mayor of Hammersmith & Fulham, said: “I talked to the mayor using the new service and found it really helpful. It will make a big difference to me as I’m now able to contact the council the way I want to.”

Read more

If you are thinking about buying a hearing aid, it’s good to do a bit of market research to find out what’s available. After all, hearing aids are expensive items and you want to do everything you can to make sure you purchase the right one for you. You can read about the best hearing aid manufacturers here.

Who are the six big hearing aid manufacturers?

There are six hearing aid manufacturers that are known as the big six, they would provide the bulk of the hearing aid market worldwide. They are as follows:

• Starkey
• GN ReSound
• Siemens (now Sivantos)
• Widex
• William Demant Holding (owners of Oticon)
• Sonova (best known for Phonak hearing aids)

When you visit a hearing aid vendor / audiologist they will surely recommend certain makes and models to you. With a bit of market knowledge you will be better placed to ask why a certain aid is being recommended or why they don’t think another model is a good choice.

Below is a list of the big-name hearing aid manufacturers, the hearing aids they produce and some links to sites.

• Audio Controle
  Audio Controle produce the wide range of analog and digital hearing aids, including the Harmony, Solo, Duo, Vivo, Eligo and Maestro.
• Beltone
  Beltone, part of GN Resound, produces a range of hearing aids, including the Corus, Mira and Edge.
• Bernafon
  Bernafon produces a wide range of hearing aids, including the Symbio XT, Smile Plus, Neo, Flair, Win, Audioflex, Opus2 and Lexis.
• Coselgi
  Coselgi, of Italy, produce a range of hearing aids, including various in-the-ear, behind-the-ear and eye glass models. 
• Electone
  Electone produce a wide range of hearing instruments, such as various product lines with a variety of digital, programmable and conventional circuits.
• Elkon
  In addition to supplying products from other manufacturers, Elkon of India produce their own range of hearing aids and audiometers for the Indian market.
• Entific
  Entific produce bone anchored products including the BAHA System bone-anchored hearing aid.
• General Hearing Instruments
  General Hearing manufactures a wide range of hearing aids, including open-ear, ready-to-wear, soft technology and high fidelity digital.
• GN Resound
  GN Resound produce a range of hearing instruments, including the Canta, ResoundAiR, NewTone Plus and Aventa fitting software.
• Hansaton
  Hansaton, a Germany company, produce digital hearing aids such as the Leonardo, Premio, Vital, Activo and Junior.
• Interton
  Interton is a German manufacturer that produces a wide range of hearing instruments, including the Bionic that has artificial intelligence and the WirelessCROS that allows wireless signal transmission from one ear to the other.
• Magnatone
  Magnatone produces a range of hearing aids, including the Claret, TruVoice and Monet.
• Micro-Tech
  Micro-Tech produce a wide range of hearing instruments and products based on innovative technology. Products include the Alpine II and Touchless Telecoil.
• Oticon
  Oticon produce a wide range of hearing instruments, including the Syncro, Adapto, Tego, Atlas, Go, Sumo and Swift.
• Phonak
  Phonak produce a wide range of digital and analogue hearing devices and products. This includes the Savia digital range.
• Puretone
  Puretone manufacture a range of hearing instruments, including the small Ultra CIC 2010, custom digital and the ESP II digitally programmable devices.
• Rexton
  Rexon produce a wide variety of BTE and custom ITE digital and analog hearing devices.
• Rion
  In addition to their other audiological equipment, Rion of Japan produce a wide range of hearing instruments.
• Siemens
  Siemens produce a range of hearing instruments and products, including the Acuris, Triano and Prisma 2 devices.
• SONIC innovations
  SONIC innovations produces digital hearing aids and hearing aid components, such as the Natura 2 SE and the Altair.
• Sonovation
  Sonovation produce digital hearing instruments, such as the Nano Xp, ImpaCt Xp and the Logicom Xp.
• Starkey Laboratories
  Starkey Laboratories produces a wide range of digital and analogue hearing instruments. These include the DaVinci PxP and other digital instruments that contain Precision Audio Imaging and Precision Directional Imaging technologies.
• United Hearing Systems
  United Hearing Systems produces various custom hearing instruments. They also are licensed to manufacture and distribute the TransEar bone conduction hearing aid.
• Unitron Hearing
  Unitron Hearing offers a feature-rich comprehensive digital product line, as well as programmable and analogue hearing instruments.
• Widex
  Widex produces a range of digital hear instruments, including the élan, Senso, Bravo and A-series ranges.

Whilst I was out at lunch the other day, I got a call from an old friend that I hadn’t spoken to for months. I was outside when he called – it was a windy day.

He was telling me all about his new Flickr photo sets when suddenly he stopped talking mid-sentence and asked, “What’s that noise? Is it a plane?”. There was nothing overhead and I told him so. “Oh”, he said, “Must just be the wind blowing in your phone’s microphone then”.

Yeah, welcome to my world!

He had wind-noise for the duration of our phone call – I, and no doubt many other hearing aid wearers, have to put up with it every time we step outside. My Starkey Destinys do not cut out the wind-noise at all, in fact, none of the aids that I’ve owned over the years have.

I’ve found that a woolly hat pulled down over my ears is my best defence.

Do you have problems with wind-noise or do your aids cut it out to a decent level?

We may have just been given a sneak peek into the future of hearing aids by Sun Kyung Sunwoo from the University of Technology, Sydney. She entered her Wirear design into the Australian Design Awards.

It’s a radical departure from the in or behind the ear models we are used to seeing. My initial impression is that it looks ugly but I guess it could grow on me, what do you think?

It’s interesting to see an attempt at a different design – all new products from the big manufacturers seem to be always driving towards smaller models using the same basic shapes and styles. Of course, the Wirear is only a design and may not actually be feasible. Time will tell.

The official product description:

“Wirear is an innovation in both form and function. It involves a sleek form that provides flexibility with a multiply colour range to suit the market. Utilisation of emerging energy efficient, ‘micro fuel cell’ extends its usability. No longer are hearing aids a device that carries a prosthetic appearance; they can now be accepted as an elegant fashion accessory that aims to remove the disability stigma attached to existing products and their wearer.”

Just to let you know, I have activated all links in comments on this blog. By default, WordPress marked all links in comments with the “nofollow” HTML attribute – this meant that when Google and the other search engines processed a page on this blog they would not count the link as a valid one and would ignore it.

From now on, all links in all comments on all posts will be followed by Google and friends; so get commenting and get some links to your website/blog!

J from Grumpyolddeafies is –>less than convinced by DeafEquipment’s Ear Gear range. She’s right, they do look uncannily like legwarmers. But, hey, legwarmers were pretty huge in the 1980s and they looked hideous too!

This does lead on to an important question though: Can hearing aids be cool?

It wasn’t so many years ago that glasses where uncool, nowadays they are ultra stylish and no-one has a problem wearing them. Can’t say the same for hearing aids though. I may be wrong, but I believe that they are still perceived in a negative light by many people, they are not cool by a long stretch. Will they ever be? Possibly, but it’s difficult to see how. Maybe the fact the many prominent musicians wear ear pieces at live gigs to reduce background noise will go some way to making them less uncool.

Full marks to DeafEquipment for trying but I can’t see many people parading around the shops with bright yellow or khaki ears!

I was tidying out some drawers the other day and I found my old hearing aids. I have some Siemens ITCs and two pairs of Starkey ITEs – I’m sure I also have at least one pair of BTEs somewhere but they didn’t turn up. My first thought was to throw them into the bin with the rest of the stuff from the drawer but I remembered reading something somewhere about charities that recycle old hearing aids and give them to people who aren’t able to own a new pair.

Even though some of these aids are very old they are still in good working order so I might as well let someone else benefit from them. A quick Google showed that the Starkey Hearing Foundationare running a recycling scheme. Starkey’s Hear Now webpage has an address for postal hearing aid donations. This same page also has an application form should you wish to receive a donated aid. They are also looking for hearing professionals who could volunteer their time and expertise to help with the fitting and follow up of Hear Now clients.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any schemes like Starkey’s Hear Now that are running in the UK. This is a shame. If you know of any such UK scheme then please add a comment and I’ll link to them. Thanks.

UPDATE 11/09/09

I wrote the above some time ago. Since then I have started a site called Hearing Aid Market that allows people to sell give and buy hearing aids online. If you have a hearing aid to donate then you should definitely check it out.

Researchers at the University of Virginia are working on curing hearing loss with an experimental new form of gene therapy.

With more than 275 million people around the world that suffer from sort of nerve-related deafness, scientists are working on creating a virus that when placed in ear tissue can regrown tiny hairs inside the ear canal.

Otolaryngologist Brad Kesser explains these very specialized hair cells convert the mechanical energy of sound into an electrical signal in the brain, which allows one to hear. Kesser says that once these cells are damaged or lost, they are lost for good.

Doctors have been working with this type of therapy for years on mice, but this is the first time they have had success with human tissue.

Researchers hope to perfect this method for patients within the next few years.

Original article on –>ABC 7 News.