Concept And Evaluation Of A Prototype For A Mobile And Hygienic Hearing Aid Demonstrator For Showcasing Aided Benefits

Many hearing-impaired people delay or refuse treatment, partly because they fail to see the value of hearing aids and/or overestimate their own hearing abilities. To address this problem, we built a prototype hearing aid demonstrator consisting of circumaural headphones, two microphones on each side, and a miniaturized computer (the ‘Portable Hearing Laboratory’). The demonstrator is mobile, hygienic, and provides various preset gain settings to allow people to easily experience potential aided benefits, e.g., in clinical settings or at public events. In this contribution, we explain the concept and comprehensive evaluation data. First, technical measurements were made on a dummy head. Second, speech intelligibility in quiet and noise (S0N0) and loudness perception were measured in fifteen adults with moderate sensorineural hearing loss. These measurements were performed unaided, with the prototype in a preset gain setting selected for the individual hearing loss, and with commercial hearing aids fitted individually using real-ear measurements. Our results indicate that the performance of the prototype is close to that of a comparison commercial device and provides significant benefit compared to unaided listening. Third, during a public outreach event, 54 people with and without hearing loss tested the demonstrator and completed questionnaires about their hearing abilities and expected hearing aid benefits before and after trying the prototype. These data give insights into how the demonstrator can showcase hearing aid benefits and raise awareness for one’s own hearing difficulties.

Acknowledgements: This study was carried within the Interreg network project ‘HABelt’, which was funded by the European Regional Development Fund.