Hear In Private Practice

By Victoria Adshead     A £350,000 National Institute of Hearing Research-funded study is taking to the road in a unique research van to visit 200 infants who have been fitted with hearing aids. Researchers at the University of Manchester came up with the idea as they know that pressures on families can make participation in research extremely difficult, but that

Editor’s Note: Today’s post continues the discussion by Abigail Farmer and Bruno Sarda on the evolution of hearing aid technology.   The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) makes it illegal to discriminate against disabled individuals.1 Under the Act, disabled means that an individual is “substantially impaired with regard to a major life activity, has a record of such an impairment, or

Editor’s Note: Today’s post continues the discussion by Abigail Farmer and Bruno Sarda on the evolution of hearing aid technology. Alternatives to Hearing   As discussed previously, humans have always applied their creativity in pursuit of making things better. In the case of helping people hear better, we will first review technologies that have provided alternative to hearing, and we

Editor’s Note: Today’s post continues the discussion by Abigail Farmer and Bruno Sarda on the evolution of hearing aid technology.   Changing Hearing Aid User Demographics   In 2013, there were 44.7 million individuals over the age of sixty-five in the United States, or about 14% of the population.1 This age group is expected to grow to 21.7% of the population

Editor’s Note: Today’s post continues the discussion by Abigail Farmer and Bruno Sarda on the evolution of hearing aid technology.   Ageism impacts the way individuals see themselves in relation to society. In 1895, the Hawksley Catalogue of Otacoustical Instruments to Aid the Deaf reminded deaf individuals that they were “always more or less a tax upon the kindness and

Editor’s Note: Today’s post continues the discussion by Abigail Farmer and Bruno Sarda on the evolution of hearing aid technology .    A more recent development introduced in 2003, the Receiver-in-Canal (RIC) hearing aid, has proven disruptive to the modern hearing aid market. This innovation has taken Behind-the-Ear (BTE) hearing aids from about 15% market penetration in 2003 to about 50%

Editor’s Note: Today’s post continues a discussion on the evolution of hearing aid technology by Abigail Farmer and Bruno Sarda.    The Transistor (Modern) Era   The next generation of hearing aids quickly adopted the new transistor technology that Bell Laboratories had introduced in 1948. The first transistor hearing aid was introduced by Sonotone in 1952. Early transistors had many

Editor’s Note: Today’s post continues a discussion on the evolution of hearing aid technology by Abigail Farmer and Bruno Sarda.  The First Electric Hearing Aids   Electrified hearing devices appeared around 1900, following the inventions some twenty years earlier of carbon microphones by Thomas Edison and the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. Electrical hearing aids were actually the primary technology

Editor’s Note: Today’s post continues a discussion on the evolution of hearing aid technology by Abigail Farmer and Bruno Sarda.    Going Beyond Human Abilities   The second thread in the pursuit of human enhancement does not focus on meeting existing societal expectations of what “normal” function is, but rather on exceeding the norm, and ultimately to change it by

Editor’s Note:  Hearing Health and Technology Matters is pleased to bring our readers a series of posts utilizing a multidimensional approach to How Hearing Aid Technology Has Evolved in Society, and Why. This is a unique perspective from that traditionally presented, coming from individuals having no previous contact with the hearing aid industry, audiology, or having any kind of investment in