Brand New Oticon More Hearing Aid with AI - our initial thoughts

hi there welcome to value hearings youtube  channel i'm emma i'm a clinical audiologist   and today's video is a bit of an impromptu update  on a new hearing aid that has just been revealed   just a few days ago by oticon so oticon are  a danish company they are one of the largest   hearing aid companies in the world and they  are highly highly respected they released a   very successful hearing aid called open opn four  and a bit years ago so we were expecting they'd   come out with something at some point but they  kept this one quite secret and it has been just   very slightly revealed a few days ago what  should be coming in the next couple of weeks   so we know that you like to be kept up to date  with this kind of thing so we thought we'd give   you a little bit of synopsis in a video of what we  have learned so far so we know it's called oticon   more more more is referring to their completely  new way of approaching sound processing so if you   look at oticon's website at all you will know that  they are very into something called brain hearing   so they've put a lot of time a lot of effort and  actually a lot of research into how the brain   works with processing science and understanding  environments so their whole focus has been since   even the last platform they released in open has  been on brain hearing so supporting your brain   to understand and adjust to sounds better not  about always prioritizing speech over noise but   allowing you to understand speech over noise but  still appreciate the sounds around you and to an   extent open definitely seem to achieve that this  hearing aid takes it one or actually more like   10 steps further it seems that they've completely  rewritten the rules of how hearing aids will work   so they've used something called a deep neural  network to train the hearing aids and what a deep   neural network is it's a type of artificial  intelligence so it is machine learning and   artificial intelligence but it is to the extreme  um of artificial intelligence in that it is   a network a neural network that can learn  from experience it's actually based on the   human brain the whole idea of it is not unique  to oticon at all it has been used in lots of   different areas of technology and you and  i will have been using deep neural networks   for years now in things like google assistant so  it's a really clever technology but it requires   a huge amount of data storage speed and no one has  done that before well no commercially available   hearing aid has done this before i have no doubt  there are other manufacturers doing it right now   but oticons seem to be the first one to have  released it so what they've done this deep   neural network has been used to be trained in  12 million different sign scenes they're saying   that they're the first hearing aid company to  have ever left the lab or broken out of the lab   and actually done this in real life so 12 million  real life sound scenes they've got this amazing   spherical 360 degrees microphone that has  traveled through these 12 million sign scenes   and has learned from experience how to balance  them precisely so that you get the most from   that environment so you understand the speech if  there's speech in that environment but it isn't   always just the speech in front of you it means  you can probably hear the person trying to get   your attention from behind it means you'll also  be able to appreciate the birds in the trees the   traffic sign the music but it is going to have  it really well balanced as you probably know if   you've worn hearing aids before they don't always  get the balance right sometimes all the noise goes   sometimes there's more noise than speech sometimes  the hearing aids are working so hard to focus on   the speech that you feel cut off from maybe the  speech behind you so we don't always get it right   and sometimes we do get it right you do hear the  speech better than the backward noise but it can   sound a bit distorted because of everything  we've done to the signal and that has worked   to a certain extent because it's meant people  could understand speech in noisy environments   but obviously it wasn't ideal but we were working  with the technology we had at the time what oticon   are saying is that they've trained this computer  to completely accurately balance that scenario   so amplify the different sounds completely  differently in a way that you're able to then   enjoy them just like a normal hearing person so  the normal hearing brain does a lot of work with   the sound that all this sound comes into the ear  through the cochlea it becomes a neural code then   it goes in through the brainstem and then the  brain uses a subsystem called orient where it's   deciding well where are the sounds coming from  what are the signs what are the nature what's   important what isn't important to me what do i  want to filter right what's what do i want to   focus on and that can change from second to second  um but when we have a hearing impaired brain   that's not so easy so what oticon are saying is  that this hearing aid is going to do that for you   it's going to give you all that information in the  correct balance so that you're able to enjoy the   whole environment and probably to a certain extent  then pick and choose what you want to listen to as   well but they're going to support you in that so  like i said they're making some huge claims here   it sounds amazing what they're saying the fact  they're saying not only has the hearing aid being   trained by a deep neural network you will actually  have a deep neural network on your ears all the   time every time you're wearing it you've got this  hearing aid with a computer that's so powerful   it's able to constantly balance the environment  for you it'll be pretty interesting to see when we   get these out in the field and we have our clients  who've been used to traditional hearing try them   and definitely clients who've never had hearing  aids before trying them and getting a bit of an   idea of how they respond and if it really is  as good as it says the other things that we've   learned it's rechargeable only at this point  i don't know if a zinc air model is coming   their words their language suggests it's not that  they're going to just stay with rechargeable which   would make sense if it's a very powerful hearing  aid it could be quite heavy on the battery so   they want to keep it rechargeable um we know  it's probably going to be coming out in the   next few weeks i mean maybe before christmas most  likely in january i'd imagine here in australia   we don't know anything about pricing or  anything at this point we do know that it   connects to iphones made for iphone technology  which they've always had with otacom but also   they're going to be working with modern android  phones so anyone with an android with 8.0 and   up on the operating system so there is already a  list online of what phones are compatible with the   oticon more hearing aids so we'll put that in the  link below in the description um so that's what we   know so far we basically know that they're turning  the industry on its head by the signs of it   however i say all of that very cautiously  because oticon are as i said very highly   respected they're known for their engineering  but they're also known for their marketing so   as audiologists when we hear otocon has something  new we generally tread quite carefully because um   they can make a feature that has been used  by another hearing aid manufacturer even   by themselves sound really exciting and new and  groundbreaking um and often it's it's just being   repackaged and remarketed so they're very good  at that i don't think that that's what this is at   all i do think this is genuine but we don't know  until we actually get the training next week and   we actually see it for ourselves we see the data  and more so get you guys to wear them for us and   give us some feedback on on what you think of a  hearing aid that runs on deep neural networks um   it looks like what they're saying is they're  they're not going to be using directional   microphone technology or any sort of classic noise  reduction which is crazy after you know 30 years   of that kind of technology being used it's quite  a big step but it wouldn't surprise me if they   were giving that a go because they did break the  mold with the open as well so time will only tell   very interesting times we're living in 2020s  being a big one for the hearing aid industry   what we'll do when we get the training next  week if anything is really groundbreaking or   if anything i've said in this video turns out not  to be accurate we'll make another video to let you   know and definitely as we have done with the other  hearing aids that have been released this year   when we've fitted a few we'll definitely give you  an update on what the feedback has been so far   but any questions any comments just  leave them in the little box below for us   if you liked this content please like and share  the video definitely subscribe to our channel if   you haven't already it really helps increase our  reach on youtube thank you so much for watching

Channel: Value Hearing

Views: 11,060

Rating: 4.9536681 out of 5

Keywords: Oticon, Oticon More, New Oticon Hearing Aid, Hearing aids, Deep neural network, latest Oticon hearing aid, #artificialintelligence, Machinelearning, yt:cc=on

Id: v70VwtZubMQ

Length: 9min 15sec (555 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Steelsoldier77]

We just had a webinar about the new device at work. It sounds like an interesting concept and I'm excited to try them out. Unfortunately they will only be in the private sector for us until later in 2021 so I won't see a whole lot of them. Lot of neat features supposed to be included

[u/coppertonetanlines]

Really enjoyed this video!

[u/the_bugchaser]

Great work indeed!

[u/Bryllant]

Mom just got a set of these yesterday. She can hear me now!