This AI-powered hearing aid improves as you wear it
For $139 per month, Whisper offers a hearing aid that improves over time and can adapt to individual needs.
A typical high-end hearing aid keeps all of its essential electronics in a module that sits behind the wearer’s ear. When it launched its first hearing aid earlier this year, however, Whisper added another processing module that it calls “the brain” into the equation. About the size of a deck of cards, the brain sits in the wearer’s pocket and includes five processors—in addition to the two in the earpiece itself—in order to add AI-powered features to help address the wide range of hearing loss people typically experience.
Types of hearing loss vary widely from person to person. According to the Johns Hopkins Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health, more than 38 million individuals in the U.S. suffer some form of hearing loss. Whisper hopes that AI will help address the disparity in those conditions. Rather than relying totally on AI, however, Whisper also uses a hearing health professional to guide the process along.
Whisper is only available as part of a $139 monthly subscription, and getting fitted with a device starts with a trip to the audiologist. Rather than allowing users to skip the trip to a professional, Whisper relies on a doctor’s expertise to get the device working properly for each specific individual. “You get an audiogram and they use that to program the device,” says company president and co-founder, Andrew Song. “That’s just a starting point.”
Keep reading the full article from Popular Science.
Image: Whisper’s hearing aid solution includes a brain module that connects wirelessly to the earpieces. Source: Whisper
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