Hearing aid zooms in on voices

The company would initially concentrate on devices for those with moderate hearing loss, which is common among older people.

When Incus puts its products on the market, it will price the system at about US$599 per wearer, a steep discount to current devices.

To remove the stigma, the device is put in plain sight but does not resemble a clinical hearing aid. In one option, the wearer has the device on a necklace, and it resembles a medallion. Another resembles regular headphones.

Mr Berg said the key technological innovation in the Incus system lay in its ability to screen out background noise, boost specific voices and tailor the device to each wearer’s hearing profile.

The Incus device mimics humans’ natural ability to distinguish sounds they are interested in and screen out background noise – a faculty that is lost to most hearing-aid wearers.

The system’s algorithm can distinguish human voices from background noise such as that from engines or clattering tableware. This brings forward the voices the wearer is trying to listen to while noises recede. The system can also distinguish between different human voices. “If the wearer is in a conversation with three different people - A, B and C – then the system can identify and focus on any one of these three voices,” Mr Berg said. The headset can detect which speaker a wearer is looking at, and turn up that voice. Users can switch between an environment mode – picking up all sounds around them as they might want to do in a quiet environment – and a focus mode when they zoom in on particular voices.

Mr Berg described this intelligent source-separation as the key feature of Incus’s technology.

Another unique feature is matching the device to a wearer’s hearing profile.

“After they obtain the device, wearers go through a brief hearing test,” Mr Berg said. This test reveals the lowest volume at which the wearer can hear sound at each frequency. The wearer can see a graphical representation of their profile on their smartphone. A Bluetooth signal sends the profile to the device, which uses the profile to adjust the volume of each frequency sent into the wearer’s headphones. This tones down frequencies the wearer is sensitive to, reducing noise, and boosts frequencies they find hard to perceive, boosting such voices.

The hearing test and hearing-aid app are both on the smartphone (both iOS and Android platforms) and embedded in the hearing-aid device itself.

In addition to picking up sound in the wearer’s environment, the device can also stream audio directly from the smartphone, enabling the wearer to hear phone calls or YouTube recordings.

Mr Berg acknowledged concerns that many elderly people find smartphone apps hard to work with, but said family members would be able to help and run simple tests for them as the company’s research showed it is usually family members who buy hearing aids for the wearers.

A distribution partner Incus is working with in Mainland China operates through organisations helping the elderly, and their staff can help the wearers set up their systems, he said. Another advantage of working with elderly-care organisations is that it is easy for Incus to gather large numbers of customers, arrange trials and collect feedback.