This post is a paid partnership with Phonak Hearing Aids.
According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIH), one in every eight of us — including some 1.1 BILLION young people—now suffers from hearing damage. It is an insidious problem that can lead to a bevy of other health issues including depression and increased risk of dementia. Folks suffering from hearing loss also report feelings of isolation.
A recent landmark study even noted a remarkable connection between hearing health and cognitive function. People with hearing aids experience a 48% reduction in the loss of thinking and memory abilities.
Humans have been trying to solve the problem of hearing loss for a long time. A 17th-century French priest and mathematician created the first hearing-aid-type device, the ear trumpet, around 1634. Since then, we have improved hearing aid technology significantly. However, background noise has remained a pesky problem to work out. You might call it the Kryptonite of people with hearing loss.
CHANGING THE HEARING GAME WITH AI:
Think about it this way: You are eating dinner at a crowded restaurant. Your brain has to differentiate between the sound of dishes clattering, other people talking, background music, and a thousand different sounds. As you eat, your mind and ears have to sort through all of it in real time to tune out distractions and tune in on a server asking a question or your loved one telling a story. It’s all incredibly complicated, and simply turning down the volume on some of it doesn’t work.
Recent advances in AI are changing all that.
HOW PHONAK TACKLES BACKGROUND NOISE:
We partnered with Phonak to bring you news of its next-generation Audeo Sphere Infinio hearing aids, which the company calls a “world first.” Essentially, they harness the power of artificial intelligence to separate speech from background noise by using 22 million sound samples to differentiate a person’s voice from any other sound. This dramatic leap in signal processing gives you unprecedented speech understanding from all directions and virtually any environment.
To really tackle this issue, Audeo Sphere Infinio uses AI and a microscopic (but incredibly advanced) “dedicated deep neural network chip.” They call it the ‘deepsonic.’ It’s like having a computer nestled inside a device smaller than a fingernail in your ear. It instantly adds 53 times more processing power than existing hearing aids. That same chip also enables 4.5 million neural connections to effectively separate speech from noise, regardless of the direction.
In other words, rather than turning down all the noise to decrease background sound, Audeo Sphere Infinio can pick out certain sounds to reduce it. It’s stunning and life-changing.
We’ve tried them ourselves even, and it gave us what felt like superhero hearing. We’re here in Las Vegas and just walking through a casino — with all of the machines and alarms and bells and music — we can actually make out everything people are saying really clearly. And it all syncs up with an app on your phone so you can customize even more as you go — for every environment and need.
This is why we do the job we do — to uncover tech that truly changes people’s lives for the better. We’re excited to help introduce this product and hope you’ll let us know what you think!
These hearing aids debuted today at a launch event at Sphere in Las Vegas, and Phonak’s already showcasing this new tech on the exterior of Sphere (called the “Exosphere”) at a scale that’s never been seen before.
Ask your audiologist for more details and be sure to visit Phonak’s website for more information.