In the two previous pieces in this series, I wrote about how digital technology has transformed hearing health care. And it has!  From adaptive directional microphones, frequency lowering and digital feedback & noise suppression, to digital 3D printing and Bluetooth wireless streaming. But...there’s a saying about computers-”They work great until they don’t!” 

At any stage of the process, technology ‘fails’ can create issues for myself and/or my patients. Before returning to clinical care, I worked in the Audiology Technical Support group at the seminal hearing aid manufacturer ReSound (now GN ReSound). Our job was to support clinicians in the field dispensing our products. I’ll never forget the release of ReSound’s first fully digital hearing aid (in 1998), the Digital 5000 Series. It was a truly groundbreaking hearing aid, and patients loved them-when they worked. A corruption during the manufacturing process of the initial batch of circuits caused many of those units to fail.

Corruption of data can also cause issues with how hearing aids perform, since it is the digital language which tells them how to process sound. There’s an old adage, “bad data in, bad data out”. If the digital commands going to the circuit are corrupted, the hearing aid can behave in strange/unintended ways. I’ve even encountered hearing aids that were not working, but sprang to life simply by connecting them to my computer. Didn’t know what to make of those!

Recently, Microsoft released their latest update to Windows 10. Unfortunately, that update caused wireless communication issues between computers and other devices (scanners, printers, etc.). In my case, the computer no longer recognized my wireless programming device I had to revert back to the previous version in order to program hearing aids!

The advent of Bluetooth in hearing aids, connecting hearing aids to other technologies (laptops, smartphones, etc.), has added another avenue for issues to pop up. Every time Apple releases a new iOS for their phones/tablets, all the manufacturers scramble to determine if the new operating system is going to cause connectivity issues between their hearing aids and iPhones/iPads. Sometimes the iPhone/iPad itself may be the source of the problem-too many apps open in the background or the device hasn’t been powered down in a while

Thankfully, the vast majority of the time, today’s advanced digital hearing aids and assistive listening devices faithfully, comfortably & consistently improve the lives of their users.

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