Innovation Versus Technology

New Bern

I have a new hearing aid! So far it is working great.

I have had severe high frequency hearing loss since the age of 19. It was caused by a factory job back in the age before workers wore ear protection. I've been tested many times and been told many times that a hearing aid might not help. Because of the uncertainty, and because there is no such thing as an audiologist who is not trying to sell me something, I was unwilling to try those $4000 per ear gadgets.

I tried cheap amplifiers. They didn't help enough to convince me to wear them regularly.

Recently I heard about a breakthrough new aid that costs only $300. The popular press oversimplified the story and said it was better because of Bluetooth. That's only part of the story. The stories, and the low price convinced me to give it a try.

The device is the CS10 sold by Sound World Solutions. Stavros Basseas, the inventor, was a hearing aid engineer. He knew what he was doing. I attribute his breakthrough to more than just new technology, and Bluetooth. He must have perceives several simultaneous factors, and he knew their value because of his experience.

1. Bluetooth headsets for use with cell phones have become a consumer quantity, and are well down on the price curve.
2. Wearing a Bluetooth headset has become a fashion statement. People are used to seeing them. Compare that with hearing aids which are miniaturized at great expense to hide invisibly in the ear. They were small because people did not want the world to know about their hearing problem. With the CS10, the world can think I'm wearing a phone headset.
3. A traditional hearing aid includes an audiology test. You have to pay the sky high wages of the professionals who do the test. The test much be very accurate and calibrated because results will be fransfered from the testing device to the hearing aid. The CS10 runs its own hearing test while in my ear. No professionals needed, and demands on accuracy in sound volume are low.
4. All the "intelligence" and personalization features of a hearing aid must be built into the in-ear device. All user control over the device must be done with buttons or whatever. The CS10 uses an app on my android phone to do all that stuff.

Given all that, the device on my ear need only be a minor tweak on a standard Bluetooth headset. That enables the cost to drop 95%, and the price by 90%. He makes money. I save money. Win win.

As a bonus, the CS10 also acts as a headset for my phone. No separate device needed. Put a video camera in it and I'm halfway to having Google Glasses.


Best of all, push a button and it has a restaurant mode. That uses a directionl microphone to amplify voices of people I'm facing, while suppressing the background noise. Hooray. That has been my chief complaint all those years. Background noise, especially the noise of fans in the room, degraded my ability to hear speech greatly.

Such is the nature of true innovation. It is the essence of good engineering. Too bad the public honors scientists but seldom engineers.