As The Economy Turns: Audiology NOW! Exhibitors Promise To Feed Hearing-Aid Market Turnaround With New Products And Technology

I just arrived in beautiful San Diego to attend the American Academy of Audiology’s annual conference, Audiology NOW!, which has become the premier North American showcase for new products and technologies from large and small hearing-aid manufacturers. There seems to be a little more excitement from an industry that has been pummeled by the recession and held to low-to-no-digit sales growth in the past couple of years. This year, the big players have come locked and loaded. Everywhere one turns there seems to be a promotion for Oticon’s new Agil flagship product line. Panasonic will be making its formal U.S. market debut Thursday evening where Panasonic hearing’s US chief Delain Wright will share more of the company’s plans. Siemens has a huge booth in what will surely be a show of commitment to its hearing-aid business following its recent apparent decision not to spin off Siemens Hearing Instruments to private equity investors. Starkey is promising a slew of announcements Friday night in a function on the deck of the USS Midway aircraft carrier. And that’s just scratching the surface. I’ll be posting more news on everything that seems to be either interesting or important, or both.

Oticon To Double The Processing Power Of Its Hearing Aids With New Flagship ‘Agil’ Family

William Demant Holding Group’s Oticon hearing-aid brand is getting ready to introduce a new line of hearing aids with twice the processing power of its current flagship family and a new set of sound processing algorithms that the Denmark company claims will substantially improve users’ comprehension of speech in noise. Oticon’s new Agil family will be formally launched in March and be shown for the first time at the American Academy of Audiology convention in San Diego in April. The Agil family will serve a broad range of hearing needs from moderate to severe hearing loss and will come in form factors ranging from behind-the-ear (BTE) to receiver in the ear (RITE). Oticon is promoting two innovations enabled by the more powerful processing platform: Speech Guard and Spatial Sound 2.0.

Oticon says Speech Guard is based on a new wireless platform with twice the calculation power of its current flagship Oticon Epoq family. It includes a new processing kernel that it says will preserve signal fidelity–quality of sound, especially human voices–far more effectively than in the past. At the same time, Spatial Sound 2.0, a “spatial noise management system” that “maintains natural acoustic cues.” The platform integrates seamlessly with the Oticon ConnectLine wireless listening system. Read more