If you or someone you know wears hearing aids, then you know that hearing aids aren’t a one size fits all solution. This is because hearing loss will differ from people to people, with some people suffering from a greater degree of hearing loss, while some suffer from slight hearing loss.
What this means is that hearing aids need to be calibrated to suit the wearer, and apparently this is where it gets expensive. There are cheap hearing aids with general presets, and customized ones which are prescribed and can go up to thousands of dollars for a pair, and the gap is something that Adnand Shennib is trying to address with iHear.
iHear is a hearing aid that can be calibrated and configured across the internet and on the wearer’s PC. This will apparently help to cut costs and make hearing aids cheaper for those who might not necessarily be able to afford them.
The first step is to determine the degree of hearing loss by using the test kit which is plugged into a computer’s USB while the wearer puts on a pair of specially designed headphones. A diagnostic tool can be accessed online which will determine the degree of hearing loss, after which the device is then shipped to the user.
From then on, the user will be able to complete the fitting process themselves and program the hearing aid to adjust for different environments. As it stands iHear is an Indiegogo project that has since exceeded its modest goal of $65,000. The company plans on shipping the hearing aids in September if everything goes according to plan.
In the meantime if you’d like to learn more about iHear, you can check out the video above or head on over to its Indiegogo page for the details.
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