Wireless Hearing Interfaces (Including Bluetooth)
You've probably heard of Bluetooth by now. It's a wireless protocol that
enables any appropriately equipped devices to talk to each other. Examples
of particular interest to people with hearing loss are hearing aids, cell
phones, FM systems, etc. It probably won't be too long until all these
devices interface seamlessly!
July 2004 - Are your hearing aids bluetooth-enabled? Would you like
them to be? It's not as hard as you think; anyone who's reasonably handy
with a soldering iron can build a hearing aid
bluetooth adapter!
July 2004 - The previous article talked about enabling your hearing
aids to be bluetooth compatible. This article talks about
using bluetooth to build a much cheaper
and more powerful hearing aid!
January 2006 - The Future of Wireless Devices in
Hearing Health Care
February 2007 - Bluetooth
Headsets Remove Hearing Aid Stigma
April 2007 - Oticon
Epoq wireless capabilities provide binaural processing and more
July 2007 -
NFMI Promises Huge Leap in Hearing Aid Capabilities
December 2007 -
Wireless transmission of speech and data to, from, and
between hearing aids
December 2007 -
Hearing Aids and Wireless Protocols
December 2007 -
Assessing the feasibility of Bluetooth in hearing
rehabilitation
January 2009 - Bluetooth and Hearing Aids: Ready
for prime time?
April 2009 - Oticon ConnectLine(tm) Enhances
Wireless Connectivity
April 2009 -
Binaural hearing on the telephone with Bluetooth
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July 2004
OK, I admit it sounds a bit techie, but I looked at the article and
think it's easily doable for anyone who's reasonably handy with a
soldering iron. With the current and future batch of Bluetooth enabled
devices, having your hearing aids bluetooth enabled will be very cool!
If anyone is willing to give it a go, please let me know; if more
than one of you have at it, I'll put you all in touch and you can help
each other. And I'd love to see a follow-up article reporting successful
projects!
To get started, point your browser to: http://www.gfern.com/btha/btha.html
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January
2006
Editor:
Hearing Review has an article how wireless technology is affecting and
will affect hearing aids in the next several years. Here's an excerpt
and a link to the complete story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Wireless is here to
stay and has the potential to significantly affect the provision of
hearing care. Hearing aids equipped with wireless systems will solve
many of the most common issues encountered by hearing aid
wearers—telephone use, noise, and listening problems associated with
distance and reverberation. They may also someday enhance binaural
processing and offer a means by which a hearing aid can learn how best
to deal with the ever changing acoustic environment. Ultimately,
wireless devices may foster the convergence of the normal-hearing and
hard-of-hearing markets and potentially redefine the way hearing care is
provided. It’s an exciting time; stay tuned." Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
February
2007
The
old stigma of wearing a hearing aid vanishes with the cell-phone era of
ear-based devices for anyone.
When
people see the device on Jim Haniacek's ear, they correctly assume that
it's connected to his cell phone. What they don't know is that it's
connected to his hearing aids too. "It does look like a
Bluetooth," the 26-year-old private investigator said. "No one
believes I have hearing aids." That he now has to convince people
that he has hereditary hearing loss comes as a relief to Haniacek, a
resident of Chicago's West Lawn neighborhood. He was concerned about the
stigma of wearing hearing aids after he was diagnosed about a year ago.
Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oticon,
Inc. today introduced Oticon Epoq, the first hearing instrument designed
with wireless connectivity at its core to address the two most common
listening challenges for people with hearing loss. A proprietary binaural
high speed wireless technology enables a pair of Epoq hearing devices to
communicate at data transfer speeds 100 faster than hearing instruments
now on the market. This real-time connectivity with voices and other
sounds in the immediate listening environment provides accurate,
stereophonic auditory information that is in synch with a user's visual
experience. The same wireless connectivity also enables easy, hands-free
access to the world of electronically transmitted sounds from
Bluetooth-enabled cell phones and other popular electronic devices such as
MP3 players and computers. Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
July 2007
NFMI wireless technology is rapidly expanding into
applications such as two-way radios and hands-free mobile phone earpieces,
and some hearing instruments.1 NFMI works on the principle of magnetic
induction, which is somewhat similar to a telecoil. With NFMI, however,
communication can be two-way and the signal can be encoded for security
purposes. Two devices or components each generate a special magnetic field,
and communication takes place via an interaction between the fields. NFMI is
ideal for incorporation within hearing instruments because the components
are very small and the power needs are minuscule. When active, the NFMI
circuit in the Oticon RISE platform increases the power consumption of the
chip by only 10%. Additionally, the magnetic field of the system does not
extend beyond approximately 3 feet, which ensures secure encoded
communication with a greatly reduced susceptibility to interference.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
December 2007
Here's a great article on the wireless
communications between hearing aids and other devices. It includes a good
history of the telecoil and how it developed, the incorporation of FM
receivers into hearing aids, and the ongoing transition to digital
communications technology (which is different from digital hearing aid
technology). The article goes on to consider Bluetooth and Near Field
Magnetic Induction (NFMI), which is the "magic" behind the Oticon Epoq
system. Finally, the authors consider what sorts of advances we might expect
in the future.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
December 2007
Here's another article from the Hearing Journal
special issue on Wireless Technology (November 2007). This one includes a
pretty good historical perspective on the development of telecoils and how
they influenced the development of telephones. It also covers more recent
innovations, including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
December 2007
With its inherent features of security, portability,
robustness, low power, and low cost, Bluetooth is also an obvious candidate
for applications in hearing instruments. As this paper will make clear,
however, practical limitations with the current Bluetooth standard are
limiting its application to hearing aids, and Bluetooth technology will not
become accessible to the majority of hearing aid wearers until these
limitations are resolved.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
April 2009
Every few years a new improvement comes along that
truly makes a difference in people's lives. One such innovation is the
Bluetooth(r)-compatible, remote control unit that relays incoming telephone
calls directly to the wearer's hearing instruments. Several manufacturers
offer these units and their capacities depend on the specific model. At the
time this was written, four wireless "relays" (as they will generically be
called here) with such capabilities are available: Epoq from Oticon, iCom
from Phonak, sonicBLU from Sonic Innovations and Tek(tm) from Siemens. These
relays all operate uniquely and have a variety of features, such as volume
control, tone control, etc. But here we will be discussing only one feature:
the ability of these units to allow wearers to talk on the telephone while
hearing binaurally.
Full Story
