OSLO, Norway (PRWEB) August 01, 2017 -- With the recent passing of the Over-the-Counter (OTC) Hearing Aid Act of 2017, 37 million people or 15% of the American adult population suffering from some form of hearing loss will soon have easier access to more cost-effective hearing care solutions. One of those solutions launches today called Mobile Ears, a free iOS app that helps people with mild to medium hearing loss to hear clear speech and sound while watching TV, at meetings and conferences with just their phone and earbuds -- no need for expensive extra hearing devices or complex hearing tests.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, approximately one in three people between the ages of 65 and 74 has hearing loss and nearly half of those older than 75 have difficulty hearing.The implications of untreated hearing loss affect every aspect of an individual’s life, from their social interactions with family and friends to their ability to work and have meaningful involvement in their communities to more serious implications, such as how they communicate with doctors and first responders in the case of an emergency. Many of these people can benefit from Mobile Ears today.
The app works while online or offline, providing personalized, clear, and amplified sound for people with hearing loss by combining statistical analysis of hearing threshold data with a tailored individual user listening profile. Users can easily adjust the sound that suits their environment, whether it´s a one-on-one conversation or television viewing, without needing to visit an audiologist or hearing specialist. Mobile Ears gives people with hearing loss speech clarity, noise cancellation, filtering and removal of unwanted background noise to ensure users hear clearly. To see how the app works, see this video.
“Our mission is to enable quality hearing under any environment, for everyone,” says Snorre Vevstad, CEO and founder of Listen AS. “With Mobile Ears, we are offering an affordable, fashionable, and easily accessible solution for anyone who needs some help with better hearing.”
Clear hearing for zero cost
Mobile Ears is the result of years of joint research efforts by Listen AS and Norwegian research organization SINTEF to perfect hearing solutions. Listen AS engineers and scientists at the Acoustics Research Center worked together to develop algorithms and solutions to amplify sound to deliver clarity of speech. Speech clarity is at the core of Mobile Ears. Most others solutions in the market sound metallic and unnatural to new users and getting used to them can take anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks. Mobile Ears takes no getting used to and helps people hear better instantly.
Control, customization & self-fitting in the hands of consumers
The OTC Hearing Aid Act of 2017 creates a new class of over-the-counter hearing aids and allows non-prescription hearing devices and apps to be marketed to treat mild-to-moderate hearing loss. Users are able to customize an over-the-counter hearing aid themselves, without going for expensive audiologist appointments. Now, smartphone technology and the Mobile Ears app allows users to self-diagnose their condition and relieve their amplification needs at home.
Laboratory studies of self-fitting hearing aids show that even rudimentary self-fitting systems are successful. For example, a smartphone app fitting, starting without an audiogram, showed that 72 percent of research participants found such a fitting system equivalent or better than settings provided with a prescriptive fitting method based on pure-tone audiometric thresholds.
Now, people can take one more leap and get rid of any physical hearing aid device itself. Smartphone apps that use the microphone and signal-processing power of the phone itself can function as self-fitted hearing aids when combined with consumer-grade earphones.
To download Mobile Ears, please visit the iOS app store here.
Using Mobile Ears:
1. Download from the iTunes App Store
2. Open the app and enter the user’s age and gender, so that the app can customize the experience
3. Plug in earphones and move the button on the slider to personalize the sound for maximum speech clarity and amplification
The smartphone can be placed on the table or in front of the users. Unlike traditional hearing aid devices, setup and adjusting the sound on Mobile Ears can be done without visiting a specialist. The app also works offline.
About Listen AS
Listen AS is an Oslo, Norway-based hearing care company developing new solutions to provide hearing care everywhere, for everyone, in all kinds of environments.
Listen is lowering the barriers for anyone who wants to hear better in any kind of environment/situation with a free, easy-to-use app Mobile Ears, which assists one´s hearing in any environment and helps people participate in all activities without any hearing limitation. For more information visit: http://listenas.com/
Press Contact
Arjun Bhatt
VP of Marketing & Sales
arjun.bhatt(at)listenas(dot)com
Jennifer Parson, Mobile Ears by Listen AS, http://mobileears.com, +1 4153773158, [email protected]
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