Bluetooth and Hearing Aids
Have you heard of bluetooth? It's the wireless protocol that allows
diverse devices to talk to each other. It's just getting going, but I'm
guessing that it will be commonplace in the hearing aid industry in a
couple of years. You can learn all about it here!
July 2004 - Bluetooth and Hearing Aids
October
2006 - Bluetooth 101: The Audiologist's Guide
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July 2004
Editor: Last week we published an article on how to make your own
Bluetooth adapter for your hearing aids. But that's just the start of
possible applications that employ Bluetooth technology. Here's Jim
Crimmins (jwcrim@wiltontech.com) with some thoughts on a very cool idea
for a low cost, next generation hearing aid.
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Bluetooth is a two-way wireless technology in the same way cordless
phone technology is or cell phone technology is. They call it
"full- duplex" meaning that you can send sounds while you are
listening to incoming sounds from the transceiver. There are different
classes of Bluetooth with ranges from 10 meters to 100 meters.
So this cuts the cord in situations where conventional systems using
tele-coils, infrared or FM would not. For example you can use Bluetooth
to make cell calls or telephone calls without any wires or without
holding a receiver or cell phone to your ear.
That same simultaneous two-way link also makes possible some new
possibilities that no one has tried yet commercially. For example you
can build an ideal computer based hearing aid in something like a PDA
(far more capable than one you could put in an ear) and wear it
remotely. You can do that because the microphone at your ear picks up
sound, transmits it to the PDA where it is cros-processed - compared
with what the other ear is hearing - and then sent back up to your ear.
The DSP doing this is at least an order of magnitude more powerful than
what you could get in a hearing aid and the cros-processing could be key
to better voice/noise performance.
The Bluetooth ear sets are 10 times cheaper than hearing aids are so
when they wear out they are comparatively inexpensive to replace. The
computer part is less likely to wear out and because it doesn't have to
be miniature or worn in the ear, it is also a lot cheaper than hearing
aids. The result could be a state-of-the-art hearing system for two ears
that costs about $1000 total and provides all the ALD functions that are
now extra cost items.
Bluetooth is used to present the concept but if it goes forward the
earsets actually used may be lower power and smaller than typical
Bluetooth earsets are now.
This was written up at: http://hearingaids.wiltontech.com/personalsoundprocessing/id1.html
and: http://www.blueear.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
October
2006
Bluetooth
technology has been implemented in numerous consumer electronic devices
(Miller 2002) and has now struck the field of Audiology. A handful of
Bluetooth products are now available to patients to enhance the listening
performance of current hearing systems. Bluetooth devices available on the
market enable wireless transmission of sound between a mobile phone and an
ear-level unit, a mobile phone and a microphone transmitter, and a
microphone transmitter to an ear-level unit. This ear-level unit may be
attached to an existing hearing aid or an independent device fitted
directly in the ear canal. Full
Story
