Wireless Hearing Aid Notification and Alarm System

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Innovative Design Labs (IDL) proposes a wireless hearing aid notification and alarm system. This system will assist the more than 28 million Americans who suffer from or face imminent hearing loss in detecting and recognizing important audible events in their home and office. It is difficult for hard of hearing persons to hear faint sounds such as a door knock, telephone ringing in an adjacent room, oven timer alarm, or smoke detector. Difficulty hearing these sounds is often a nuisance and sometimes hazardous. The goal of the proposed program is to develop a system that can detect and notify a hearing aid user when common alert sounds occur without needing to provide specialized home or office infrastructure or appliances, and without requiring the user to carry an additional device. The proposed approach will use wireless sound processing nodes that listen for the alert sounds and communicate directly with a hearing aid using new digital radio technology that is fully integrated in the hearing aid from the factory. New ultra low power digital radios fully integrated with the hearing aids and small low power sound processing technologies make the proposed system technically feasible at this time. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: It is difficult for hard of hearing persons to hear faint sounds such as a door knock, telephone ringing in an adjacent room, oven timer alarm, or smoke detector. Difficulty hearing these sounds is often a nuisance and sometimes hazardous. The goal of the proposed program is to develop a system that can detect and notify a hearing aid user when common alert sounds occur without needing to provide specialized home or office infrastructure or appliances, and without requiring the user to carry an additional device.