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IHR's latest paper: the benefits of wireless systems in hearing aids

A new paper by Bill Whitmer, Christopher Brennan-Jones and Michael Akeroyd published in the International Journal of Audiology sheds light on the speech-intelligibility benefit of wireless systems available to hearing-aid users. Despite the prevalence of wireless features in hearing aids, such as Bluetooth or telecoil, there is little prior evidence to suggest how much benefit to speech intelligibility that these wireless systems would provide to hearing-impaired adults in noisy situations.  Using a simulation of a wireless system fit to one ear with open and closed moulds, our results indicate that the addition of a wireless signal to hearing aids fitted with closed moulds could give a dramatic 20+ dB benefit in speech intelligibility, whereas for hearing aids fitted with open moulds there should be just over 5 dB improvement when the lag between airborne and wireless signal was within most current wireless delays. The results highlight the usefulness of wireless systems with hearing-impaired adults.