Exploring ReSound Enzo IA Hearing Aids: Super-Power Performance, Advanced Connectivity, and More

Hello, everyone, and welcome to This Week in Hearing. Understanding speech in loud settings is difficult for many of us, but it’s especially so for people with higher levels of hearing loss, severe and profound. Even in quieter settings, their needs are different from those of us with lesser degrees. Even I, who can wear an ordinary RIC hearing aid, have seen how much hearing in all kinds of situations have improved in the last few years due to the technological improvements. How much more important is that for people who need a high power BTE device? To meet that need, GN recently announced the new ReSound Enzo IA, a considerable step up from their previous model, Enzo Q. Here to lay out all the improvements that went into the Enzo IA is Laurel Christensen, Chief Audiology Officer at GN. Afterwards, we’ll have a few words with the president of GN hearing division, Peter Justesen, on their overall direction and efforts to combat hearing loss stigma. Laurel, this is the third time I’ve had the pleasure of discussing a product launch with you. Thanks for joining me today and congratulations to you all on the release of the Enzo IA. Thank you, and thanks for having me. Its always really fun to talk to you. Thanks. It’s fun to talk to you as well. Its hard actually not to think back to the Vivia launch where Shari Eberts and I both talked with you together back in January in Las Vegas. Now, to what extent does the Enzo IA leverage the Vivia’s improvements, and in what ways is it different? So you know, when I start to kind of talk about the new Enzo IA, I always go back to Enzo Q. So you know, superpower hearing aids are not hearing aids that we put out kind of a new one every two years. We, we you know, these have a longer life cycle, and so when you put out a new superpower hearing aid, you know, you’re, you’re usually jumping up onto a new chip you know, new technology, lots of new signal processing, you know, those kinds of things. So, you know, when you kind of look at the Enzo Q, but of course we’re going on to the chip that the Vivia is on and all of that platform that it’s based on, so certainly there are a lot of similarities. But then, you know, when you look at a superpower hearing aid, there, there are a lot of differences, and, and you have to start by kind of thinking about superpower users. And, and we’re, you know, we’re going in a little bit different direction, I think on a superpower here. I mean, this is a, a small and rechargeable superpower. So, you know, one of the first things you’re gonna think is, “Oh my gosh superpower users need their hearing aids. Is it gonna last long enough? What is the battery life gonna be?” I mean, that is the first question that, that HCPs are gonna get about this hearing aid or have about this hearing aid is, “Are my superpower users gonna be, you know, impressed with this and, you know, are they, are they ready to make that, that step into rechargeability?” There’s only other, you know, one other superpower that’s rechargeable on the market. So, you know, this is a step and this is a decision that we made that we are gonna take our, our next superpower into the rechargeable. And, you know, it’s, it’s a really nice product. It’s also smaller than Enzo Q. So it’s a very small, you know, we, we say, you know, the world’s smallest rechargeable superpower hearing instrument. And I was amazed at what the engineers did, because when you go rechargeable, you tend to have a little bit bigger battery, and, and it might get bigger. And, and our goal was to make it smaller with this rechargeable battery. You can imagine how hard it was to, to get it stable in this small package. Well, and that’s, you know, when you think about superpower, we could go into all kinds of details, right? You’ve got very high gain, so you must have really fought for being able to support that gain without getting feedback. So that’s, that’s quite a trick in a small size like that. Yeah. What are the other differences between this one and the Vivia in terms of audiological performance? What how did you address the different needs of, of high power users? Yeah. You know, so there were, there were four things, you know, and when you, when you look at the superpower user, you know, we didn’t want to compromise on, on several things. So there were four things that we said, “We will not compromise on these as we develop a, a new superpower.” So one of those was hearing in noise. You know, the most important thing, let’s, let’s give them better hearing in noise than you’d get in an Enzo Q, and, and we definitely did that. Then we said, “We have to be able to get the gain that we are getting out of Enzo Q.” Theres no doubt, you know, that we have the most gain in a superpower in the, in the industry. It’s, it’s because of our feedback. And we, we can get 26 dB of gain before, you know, headroom essentially. So gain before feedback when we turn on our feedback manager, nobody else can do that, and we do it with no gain reduction, you know, whatsoever. So gain, you know, you, you have to give really good audibility. You’ve got to provide all the audibility needed, and then you can turn on your directional microphones. But without the audibility first, you’re not gonna understand speech in noise, and you have to have the audibility and then the, the improvement in signal to noise ratio. So gain was not something we could compromise on. We also, I already mentioned, could not compromise on battery life. We have 28 hours, 20 hours if you stream half the time. So the battery life is great. And, and then we were gonna put Auracast in here. Now, you know, this is the population where I believe Auracast is gonna be great for everybody in the whole world. But this is the population where Auracast makes an amazing difference. This is the population that’s using telecoil today, and, and telecoil and Auracast and sound quality, they don’t even compare. Auracast is just really the way to go. So, those were the four things we were not gonna compromise on. So, we have all the directionality, all the signal-to-noise ratio benefit of a Vivia and, and, you know, Vivia also has great gain. What we don’t have in here is the deep neural network noise reduction. We have a lot of other AI because of course, our, you know, our, our environmental classification and our, our feedback control all are based on machine learning. But we do not have DNN in here, and that was a very conscious choice. We were not gonna be able to get 28 hours of battery life and we were not gonna compromise battery life because we knew that a super power user you know, we, we could not compromise on, on battery life for a super power user. So, we do not have that deep neural you know, neural network noise reduction. It would’ve taken a couple more years to get this product out if we were to put that in there because we would’ve had to wait for battery technology to go a little bit further, and, and so, you know, certainly DNN has its place but it is not the reason why signal-to-noise ratio gets improved in hearing aids today. It’s still the directional microphones. So, the biggest upgrade into the Vivia technology, as you ask, is, is really the directionality moving to clear focus in our hearing and noise program. Those are the biggest signal processing upgrades. Okay, and so yeah, really in the beginning you talked about gain, and I’m assuming then that that means you’re gonna get better performance in quiet settings when you’re maxing out the gain. Correct? Yeah. I mean, when you move up to the new chip and all of the gain, this, you know, the sound quality of this hearing aid is really good. You’re gonna get all of the gain that you need for a super power user, so all of those things are of course improved. But we also, you know, we have a reputation with all those Enzo products that came before we just, we just can provide the gain without feedback. And and that’s, this is really something that no other company can do. We, we really provide this gain before feedback. We don’t do gain reduction. Many companies will calibrate, they calibrate the feedback manager and they just make sure that the gain is below that and they provide almost no headroom when they turn on their feedback manager. It just keeps it from whistling. I mean, we allow, I mean, we allow you to fit way, way, way into you know, into areas that, that you would think that you would get a lot of feedback. But our feedback cancellation is, you know, it is very good. We have a static canceler that just puts the reverse filter in, and then we have a more dynamic canceler for if you’re touching your hearing aid, and, and it works really quickly. So, it handles those, you know, touching or putting on a hat, it handles that feedback really quickly. It takes it away. So, you know, that kind of feedback control without gain reduction is kind of one of our claims to fame, and yeah, I, you know, you asked about the challenges. You know, we wanted to keep this in a, in a smaller super power aid. You know, super power hearing aids are larger, but we wanted to make this smaller but make it rechargeable, and, and stability, getting it very, very stable. Thats the biggest challenge for any super power and this was, this definitely was the biggest challenge in developing it for the engineers. Okay, okay, and when you talk about noisy settings then, you’ve got a pretty narrow beam former. Is it the same beam former in the …or is it something different? Nope, it is the same one. Same one and it, you know, we have the philosophy that we don’t want the beam, you know, both hearing aids to go directional in most settings because, you know, people, and especially super powered users, they don’t wanna be cut off from their environment. Nobody wants to be completely cut off from their environment and only hear what’s in a beam in front of them, and so our philosophy has always been 360 degree sound around you and, and that’s the, it’s a huge upgrade from Enzo Q into our automatic program. That automatic program works the same in Vivia as it does in Enzo Q. What is a little bit different is when you go to the hearing and noise program, if you’re in a Vivia 9 when you go to the hearingin noise program, you get our deep neural network denoising. When you go to the hearing and noise program for our super power, you get a new beam former called Clear Focus and it provides about 3dB more signal to noise ratio and improvement over Enzo Q. So, we really did meet that goal of really taking hearing and noise to, you know, a better place for these users. Okay, so I would probably choose that one in one-on-one situations more so than when there are things going around me where then I wanna run what I’m assuming is highly directional on one side and less directional on the other. So I Yeah. my choice essentially, is that correct? That’s correct because in the automatic program, we steer it all. You really don’t need to go to the hearing in noise program that often, but if you get into a situation where, wow, I cannot hear this person talking, going to the hearing in noise program will take out just a, you know, it’ll take out that much more noise to provide about 3dB more in, in signal to noise ratio improvement. So, it’s a nice improvement. I, I work with a, a guy who has been testing Enzo and I asked him the other day you know, “How often do you switch to, to program two?” And he said, “Almost never.” He said, “I get everything automatically out of program one and I, and I really don’t need program two.” So and, and he really is a candidate for these kinds of super power hearing aids. Well, and that’s really one of the things about hearing aid technology in general and that is the scene classification has gotten so much better. I mean, my original hearing aids when I was first fitted in 2018, I was switching, manually switching programs and customizing things more often to get it just so. I hardly ever do that anymore, and Yeah, you know, it, it’s interesting because there were some very independent studies done looking at classifiers and, and what those studies found was that if a hearing aid was trying to classify music it often got hearing in noise wrong. So, you know, so think about this. You go into a restaurant, there’s background music playing. You’re not there really to hear that music, you’re there to chat. You’re there to talk to the people and, and, and have a, have a good night with other people that you came to the restaurant. Often hearing aids will put that as a music program and, and then you’re left there as a hearing aid user going, “Oh, my gosh. You know, this, this thing’s classifying it as a music program. It ups the bass. It turns all the directional off. It does the exact opposite that you need for hearing.” Right. Then you really do need a hearing in noise program because if it classifies it wrong in the automatic program, switching over to the hearing and noise program becomes absolutely crucial for people. You know, we, we don’t wanna do that, you know. We wanna be able to make sure that we classify correctly. We don’t classify music. We’ve set up a separate music program because we, we’ve known for many years that if you try to classify music, you’re, you’re gonna probably not have it set up for hearing and noise often in the right way. So, all of these, all of these systems are getting better over time, but yeah, music classification is still, is still a problem. Yeah. No, and I, I love the music setting you can get now. I, I mix at our church and it’s the only way if, if I don’t use the music setting, then what I’m hearing isn’t necessarily what everybody else is hearing, but the music setting takes care of that. And of course, that makes music listening more enjoyable generally. For sure. You know, and when you have people who are, you know, music connoisseurs and, you know, I, I don’t fit too many hearing aids anymore. I have a fantastic team of audiologists. But when I do, I actually will let that person just set the, you know, just set it up like an equalizer themselves. Play music, here you go. I’ll teach you how to, how to change the frequency response and, and you, you set up your own music program, and, you know, and, and they’re, you know, that’s always worked over the years. It’s much better than probably anything because people have different tastes in music. I mean, I, I rode in the car with my 17-year-old the other day and I don’t have that taste in music and the bass was, you Oh. definitely not how I would set my music up. Well, I was laughing because yeah, especially streaming music, the first thing I do is grab that equalizer and put the bass all the way up because of course, with a hearing aid receiver, you’re not getting it. Exactly. So… Not if it’s, not if it’s open, for sure. But I have a, but I have a, a question for you on the beam former because now you’re going very narrow and I’ve, I’ve seen, you know, devices where if you go very narrow beam forming, it can get a little bit kind of chirpy and unnatural, especially on the fringes. I mean, how are, how natural does this one sound and how are you, you know, when you go narrow beam forming and proving the comfort level of the whole scene? Yeah, you know, it’s very natural. You will, you will not know it changed. It… And, and that’s been perfected over a lot of years. You know, our, our head of research, Andrew Dittberner did a lot of research at Walter Reed with Brian Walden many years back and, and found that, that people would prefer one hearing aid to be directional and one hearing aid to be omni in most environments in noise. And, and, you know, they, they did this with a lot of veterans and they, they wrote down every single place they were and whether or not they liked program one, two and three. And those were set up very counterbalanced, but they were always choosing this one where directional, they were getting the benefit of the of the directional microphones, you don’t need two to do that, and then they were hearing everything else around. You, with our automatic program, essentially when the noise gets above 65 dB SPL, we, we will go asymmetric. We turn on the directional microphone on the side with the most noise. If it’s completely diffuse and equal, we’ll put the directional microphone on, on the right ear to take advantage of the right ear advantage. But otherwise we have that monitor ear, you know, hearing everything else. And it’s so sophisticated today that we even on the directional side, will pick up the sound that would kind of be dead over here and we actually stream it to the monitor ear. So that you’re interesting. Okay. Yeah. You’re getting 360 degrees in your monitor ear and, and it’s just completely seamless. We also keep the, the low frequencies in the directional microphone omni, the very lowest ones, so that you don’t hear this sound quality difference between the monitor ear that is omni and the directional ear. And so it’s just, it’s just very natural. You don’t even know that it, that it turns on and, and the same goes when the, when the second mic will turn on, which it will turn on if all of the noise is in the back and, and the speech is in the front. We will give you that kind of one dB extra there. But otherwise, you know, we just want people to be able to hear and, and we even do a weighted approach to our beam former where we take in less into our beam former on the side with the most noise so that we’re taking in a cleaner signal. So we, we really have some very sophisticated beam forming. You know, our, our, our beam former is about nine dB SNR improvement today. So Okay. … it’s huge. And, and a two you know, if you’re, if you’re not using a four microphone beam former that’s using ear to ear communication, a two mic system three to four dB and then you can get up to, to nine dB on these beam formers today. So it’s a, it’s a huge difference. Yeah, absolutely, including a lot of thought’s gone into it and of course for a person with profound hearing loss, their last line of defense is always to clip a multi-mic on somebody. Of course. And I mean, that, I mean, that’s the beauty of you know, that’s the beauty of the accessories. I mean, these, this severe to profound group, this is where you, you talk accessories on appointment number one. I mean, it’s the difference between hearing and not hearing in many situations for people with severe to profound and it’s so easy. You know, and our, our multi-mic because it has a line in, you know, so many patients use that in the airplane. Severe to profound users can’t put on a pair of headphones in an airplane and, and, and actually get a movie while they’re traveling and so if you can plug the multi-mic in and use your super power hearing aids, you know, on, on an airplane with the, with just the line in function there, so… And then it’s a a mic, it can be a telecoil, you know, it it can be anything. So, I mean, these are things you just don’t let super power users leave without and the TV streamer as well, although there are TVs today with Auracast so sometimes you won’t need that TV streamer you won’t need the TV streamer anymore. Yeah, actually one of the, one of the tricks I’m surprised more people don’t do is, the mic works really good with other assistive listening systems. So for example, if you go somewhere with an FM system, you can plug the mic into the FM system and just set it down on the seat next to you. It’s perfect. Yeah, there are so many uses for that multi-mic and, you know, this is the population where, you know, that, that it’s used for everything. So it’s you know, it, it’s nice to have all the accessories and then, you then I, I was talking to a superpower user just yesterday about Auracast, and, and he was, he got to experience in the UK some, some Auracast and he, you know, talked about it bringing a tear to his eyes. He couldn’t believe how great it is. You know, that was that fourth thing that we would not compromise on here. I mean, this is the group that needs Auracast now today and so we wanted to be able to bring that as well. So, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of power being used in these hearing aids with those compromises. So, you know, that’s what we had to really think about if we’re gonna go rechargeable, you know, and what are the things, what is that set that we can do now without waiting two more years? What is that set that we can do for a superpower user so that we can have that all-day battery life? And so, I think we’re in a really good place. Our clinical trials have gone extremely well on this product. People love it. We had a, a woman in the UK who works for the National Health Services, who’s been profoundly impaired since age four. And she used it and, and said, you know, she’s just never had the ability to hear a noise today that, that she’s getting now with this. So, it’s nice to see. We love this is, this is definitely the population you, you really, really enjoy making a difference for. Yeah, absolutely. And there, what? Five years’ difference between the Q and the IA Yep. … so it means a lot. It I wanna ask you, as we talked about Auracast already, but I noticed that the IA can connect to two different devices simultaneously. Yeah, you … it will be a gift to have that because it’s just, you really need to be able to… You know, there’s a lot of people who need to be able to connect to more than one thing. And that’s, you know, those are a few things that maybe Bluetooth Classic provided that, that Bluetooth, you know, low-energy audio hadn’t yet provided. You know, it’s just kind of one of those steps. Eventually you know eh, Bluetooth low-energy audio is, of course, the way to go, especially with the broadcast audio in Auracast. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think as it comes universally to other devices, then yeah, eventually LE will take over. Mm-hmm. but I wanna talk about CI compatibility too, because this is the population where you’re gonna have a higher percentage of people wearing a CI on one side and a hearing aid on the other side. And so, you have the collaboration with Cochlear. Exactly how does that work and what functionality do you get when you have a CI and an Enzo IA? Yeah, so we, we have this, you know, great collaboration with Cochlear and, and you can wear this bimodally, but not with this. Or you can, you can be bimodal with Cochlear, but not with this Enzo IA. You have to be bimodal with with Nexia still today. That won’t always be the case, you know, we’re working on the next big thing with Cochlear, but it is not, it is not going… This product will not be bimodally compatible because we will have that coming forward in another product. So we’re, we’re working on some things with them and, and, and have made a joint agreement with Cochlear and us that this product won’t be bimodal to, to make way for the next thing that will come out. Okay. Okay. Yep. Thanks for thanks for explaining that. And looking forward to seeing how that comes next for people who, you know, want to go bimodal. Yeah. For sure. And I mean, we have a, a huge commitment to, to bimodal. So you know, and that is what we’re working with Cochlear on. So it, it is something we will absolutely be doing, but it won’t, this particular product will not be bimodally compatible. Okay. Thank you for that. Yep. So, I think we’ve covered everything. Its been a great conversation, as always. Yeah … anything else to add before, I don’t think so. I just… Yeah, I can’t wait to get feedback from end users once we, once we get it out there on the market. Well, I’m happy to say I won’t be one of those. I’m just not that at that level, fortunately. Yep. Well, yeah, it’s a, it’s definitely a different, a different user. You really have to plan and think a lot differently for them, but I, you know, again, for, for us developing hearing aids there’s no population we wanna help more than this population. So we’re, we’re glad to have this one come into the market. Yeah, 100%. I mean, when you think about all of the comorbidities that come with hearing loss and just even down to the basic, you know social isolation, for example. So Absolutely. that can be done in the high-power arena to help people be able to socialize more is huge. Yeah. So You know, again … I, I would just say one really interesting thing is when Lancet, when that Lancet report came out on cognitive decline just last July, one of the, one of the things in there was it’s not just enough to solve the audibility problem, but actual hearing in noise, and your ability to hear in noise has a lot to do with this connection between cognition and hearing loss. And, and so, you know, doing everything you can for people with the best beam formers, the accessories, all of that for this population, you know, it’s, it’s even more important in light of all of the, the research that came out from Lancet. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, congratulations again for releasing this one, and I appreciate you spending some time with me. Yep. Thank you, and thanks for the invite again. You’re welcome. Take care. Oh, bye-bye. Bye-bye. Now, I’m happy to welcome Peter Justesen and congratulate him for being named president of GN’s Hearing Division. Congratulations, Peter. Thanks, Andy. I appreciate it. It’s actually a bit of a trend because right before your predecessor assumed the presidency, I interviewed him at the GN stand at EUHA. So now I do the same for you right after you assume the role. you Very good. … you’ve actually had a wide and varied career at GN. Right. had leadership roles in a number of different disciplines. Yeah. Please tell everyone a little bit about yourself and how that experience informed your approach to hearing health. Yes. You’re right. I’ve been in GN for, for some time 13 13 years, which is quite a while, and it’s it’s been a fantastic journey for me. I’ve really enjoyed it. I still enjoy it tremendously. I joined GN a little bit by coincidence because I knew some people that, that that worked here and that I worked with in the past. So joining here was, was quite by accident, but I’ve been very intentional and purposeful about staying here because I think what we do in GN Hearing is, is really, really cool and interesting and, and profound. We help people hear better and have better lives. I think that mission is, is… has absolutely got under my skin. I really enjoy what we’re doing. I My first career was in law. I was a lawyer, and that’s also what brought me to GN, law and investment banking. I worked in our M&A department in the beginning, and then after that a strategy and business development department, and then slowly, I sort of got a little bit more into the business. First a, a brief stay or three-year stay in investor relations, talking to our investors and analysts, and then into product management global key accounts, and then into the sales part of the business. And as you mentioned, just recently, I, I took over the overall responsibility for, for GN Hearing, which is which I’m very happy about. Well, I love the part where you said it got under your skin because both having been in the industry for a dozen years or so and also a hearing-impaired person myself, I get to see both sides of it, and I get to see the life and experience the life-changing difference that modern devices make, so. Yes. I love that passion when I find it in people. And I will say, I will say, the reason why I maybe say it like that is, I mean, we obviously have which I think is, is probably the most important thing for me to nurture, we have, I think, a fantastic team of passionate experts in GN Hearing, and some of them come from audiology. Some of them have parents that are audiologists or have worked in the industry for, for sometimes a number of generations. I’m not that lucky. I just come from a, a legal background family. But I was, I can remember, quite sort of surprised by how big of an impact the hearing aid industry made on me. I remember clearly, even though it was 13 years back, it wasn’t necessarily like I planned to be here for 13 years, but I just absolutely fell in love with what we do. I think it is very important and very cool. I love that. I really love that. And, and that, that comes with the Enzo IA as well because when you talk about people with profound hearing loss, they need help more than anybody. Yes. And and that’s actually… it’s quite a leap from the earlier Enzo Q. And I found it interesting because that one, the Enzo IA, is launched only seven months after the Vivia, and the Vivia followed the Nexia by barely over a year. So you’ve had three major releases in a little less than two years. Now is that just timing, or does that actually reflect a deliberate decision to accelerate development cycles and take advantage of newer technologies? You know, when, when you wanna be an innovation leader in the industry one of the most… and be an innovation leader, … because you want to make the biggest difference in your user’s life, not just for the sake of innovation itself. You really wanna go to market as soon as you can. And sometimes you have an opportunity to be a little bit faster perhaps than you predicted, and then you just wanna do that, because that’s how you help your users the most. It’s also how you become even more competitive as a company. And you’re right. Those launches have been quite close in between. Its normally a little bit closer than we normally plan but at the same time, we didn’t wanna keep back our technology. We made huge leaps forward, I think, with Vivia now Enzo as well. And and for us, we just simply wanna make sure that we can have the biggest impact in the market and for our users as we possibly can. Well, and now that the Enzo IA has really, you know, over its predecessor, moved into the modern technology, you’ve got what I would call the classical hearing aid range well in hand between Vivian and IA. What about the range below that? For example, there’s a lot of talk these days about people with either mild hearing loss or unmeasurable audiological hearing loss, but who still struggle particularly in noise. I mean, how do you see leveraging the technology you’ve developed to serve those markets? Yeah. I I think you’re absolutely right. I think we have managed to really improve our, let’s say, entire portfolio, or as you say, classical portfolio, also with the Enzo IA. And and one of the really cool things for me about Enzo IA is it allows us to have current breakthrough technology in the market for super power users. As you know, in the past, sometimes super power users have had to wait a little bit to get the most advanced technology available in the market, simply because it was not in a super power hearing aids. Right. But now that’s no longer the case. I think that in itself is one of the things that we are we’re very happy with. And then you’re right. I mean, in the other end, sort of, the range than people with severe to profound hearing loss, is people with that need just a little bit of help hearing. And that’s certainly also an interesting area for us as an industry also. but I think equally so, it’s also interesting in the context of making sure that we do a good job of educating the world around us about the importance of good hearing health. And many of those people that just need a little bit of an occasional help might eventually become real hearing aid users. And certainly also in parallel with that, it’s all about having a conversation around hearing health also when when you don’t need hearing aids to the same extent you do when you are, for example, a super power user. so obviously for us and for the industry, that’s also an interesting space. And you can also see that in many sort of hybrid-like devices, hearing and hearing health is now a real theme, which I think is fantastic that it opens up I was gonna say eyes, but maybe eyes and ears of the entire world around us that that taking good care of your hearing and making sure that you have the help you need is noticed and perceived to be important. Yeah. Quite so, really. Like, I think of I think of a couple of the studies, let’s see Dr. Beck and Brent Edwards both published separate papers on hidden hearing loss. Yeah. Yeah. And they identified about 25 million Americans who have trouble in difficult situations, but are fine and quiet. Mm-hmm. if you globalize that, that’s like half a billion people. Yeah. So all the conversations that get those people to start thinking about hearing health, I think are really important, because you say they need a little bit of help, but where they really need help typically is in social situations. So, the personal and societal impact is greater than just needing a little help, because if it causes social withdrawal, then it becomes a much bigger health and wellness issue. Yeah. And of course, GN’s putting a lot of effort into breaking down stigma and helping to normalize that, so I’ve always appreciated that part of what GN does very much. Yeah. that’s probably also why it got me to thinking and when you talk about the other parts of the, let’s say, hearing health world than, for example, super powers, is that that’s really what we are passionate about. Making sure that as a whole that we talk about and promote the importance of hearing health. Also that we somehow combat the stigma a little bit. I think it’s still one of the disciplines within let’s say human health and welfare that that maybe is a little bit less noticed in general. I think all other parts of our body and our health is something that people take great care of and understand the importance of. But maybe for hearing health, we still have a little bit of work to do make sure that people understand that there there are options for those that need it. And it’s not just… I totally agree, it’s not just a little bit about having some hearing help, because the wider topics are, as you say, sort of being able to be socially engaged to to have a nice social life and for that matter also as you also know the impact of of good hearing when it comes to, for example cognitive decline and so forth. so I think hearing health is tremendously important. It’s not just a cost for the individual but also not just a cost for a country or a society. There’s also a huge investment in-… in it that has very, very profound benefits for, for the people involved. And then, and then, I mean, you, you just be… I had a feeling we would be talking a little bit about the promotion of, of hearing health and stigma and so forth, and I brought this from my office. It’s just a, it’s a Danish Lego block. You, you won’t be able to see, but it’s wearing hearing aids. I see it. I, I think it’s a, it’s just a small signal of, of hearing aids sort of popping up in places where you wouldn’t expect them, and as you might have seen, we’ve also done other corporations or and collaborations, where we kind of put hearing aids in places where you wouldn’t expect to see them. But they also become a little bit more natural then, and and perhaps a little bit less stigmatized when you, when you see them in, in in unexpected places in, as part of normal life. Well, yeah, that’s right, and ‘The New Norm’ campaign really shows that, but also the Han Kjøbenhavn Fashion Show. Yes, yes. And, and so with, with all those efforts and efforts throughout the industry are you optimistic that there’s going to be serious in-roads made in stigma, that people will see addressing their hearing as normal as addressing their vision? And if you are, like, over what time period do you think that’ll actually happen? That’s a, that’s a very good question. I, I absolutely think that we will see an increase in penetration. I don’t think it will be dramatic overnight. That, that, that’s just not the nature of, of what we’re doing at, of the industry. But I absolutely think that as awareness increases from many different aspects and also as we get help, I would say, as an industry from other players outside of our normal industry, but just awareness in general, and for example, a little bit of help from stuff like this, I do think that penetration will, will go up. And that will allow us to help even more people than we do today. So I love that Lego actually did that. I know you haven’t worked with them in any way. It was them on their own that chose to do that, and I think that’s actually more powerful, and means that message of normalization is getting through. Absolutely. And, you know how the people are doing online these employee badges that reflect who they are or what? I noticed that Lego allows you to make custom figurines, and I’m gonna have one made that looks like me with a hearing aid on it. And that’ll be my calling card, is a, is a custom Lego. So, no, that’s… I think that’s a really great sign that you start to see this throughout society just being recognized as part of life like any other. So that’s fantastic. And that’s how I’ll close my thoughts. Do you have any anything else you want to share? No, thank you. Andy, I just wanna thank you for the opportunity to talk about something that’s incredibly important to, to GN Hearing and to me. I think obviously we talked about technology as one of the ways where we can promote the agenda and the importance of hearing health, and I’m really proud of what we have achieved as a company over the last couple of years in terms of upgrading our products and making sure that different users with different needs have a good place to go in GN Hearing in order for them to have the, the help they need and deserve to have the, best possible life. I think that is incredibly powerful and important. It is powerful and important, and I appreciate both your passion and the passion of others I’ve talked to at GN, who are really dedicated to making people’s lives better through hearing care. So thank you for that, and thank you for spending some time with me. Thank you for your time. You’re welcome. And thanks to everyone for watching or listening to this episode of This Week in Hearing.