ReSound Extends Alera Hearing Aid Family With Remote Microphone Technology And An Upgradeable Behind-The-Ear Option

ReSound has extended its popular Alera hearing aid family by offering a model featuring its innovative remote microphone technology along with another new model, an upgradeable behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aid.

The extensions will enable Alera hearing aids to serve up to 90 percent of patients with hearing loss ranging from mild to profound. In addition to advanced sound processing, ReSound’s new flagship Alera hearing aids feature extensive wireless connectivity with external devices such as the television, MP3 players and Bluetooth phones.

By offering its Remote Microphone Technology configuration to Alera customers, ReSound is marrying premium digital hearing technology with a unique form factor that the company promises will deliver less feedback, better location of sound, and near-invisible cosmetics. Rather than integrating the microphone into the processing unit, Remote Microphone Technology puts the microphone at the end of a thin wire attached to a completely-in-the-canal (CIC) processor and speaker. The microphone is hidden under the cymba concha in the outer ear, where people with normal hearing start processing sound that reaches their ears. ReSound says the result is a more “natural sound” and better directional location of sounds.

The behind-the-ear model integrates more processing power into a smaller package than previous ReSound BTEs, and because the processor can be re-programmed to provide progressively more amplification, ReSound is positioning it as the only “configurable” BTE—”a standard BTE that can easily be converted to a very small high power instrument, with one housing for both”—providing patients with an adaptable hearing instrument solution should their hearing change over time.

The Alera extensions are a good example of a trend in the hearing aid industry, with major manufacturers developing advanced digital signal processing platforms, integrating wireless and other high-end functionality, and then deploying the platform technology in different configurations across different hearing-aid form factors to reach a broader market.

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