Oticon Own™: pioneering, invisible hearing aid technology
In August 2022, the Danish hearing aid manufacturer Oticon unveiled their latest range of hearing aids: Oticon Own™. It’s the first range of in-the-ear hearing aids to feature Oticon’s new hearing aid technology. There’s never been a better time to upgrade your hearing aid, especially if you’re after the smallest, most discreet hearing aid to feature this latest technology.
What makes Oticon Own™’s latest hearing aid technology so groundbreaking?
To understand what makes the Oticon Own™ so revolutionary, we have to go back to December 2020, with the release of the Oticon More™.
Oticon More™ was the world’s first hearing aid to have a Deep Neural Network embedded on the chip. A Deep Neural Network is a kind of artificial intelligence – the chip was trained on 12 million real-life sound scenes. The Oticon researchers took a specially designed, 360° microphone out into the real world, to record everyday, real-life situations. The recorded sound scenes were then played to the chip, which learnt to recognise which sounds to focus on in millions of different situations.
So it hasn’t just been trained in a lab…
New hearing aid technology: trained to hear like we do
Previous hearing aid technology focused heavily on distinguishing between speech sounds and everything else, and has traditionally been developed under laboratory conditions.
This means that previous technology used to mute sounds that weren’t speech.
But the DNN focuses on sounds that are important – not just speech – giving you a balanced sound scene. It tries to mimic how someone with normal, healthy hearing would hear in a challenging environment.
As is the case with many forms of technological innovations, size is often a problem at the beginning (like the first computers, the first mobile phones etc.)
And with the first DNN in a hearing aid, it was only available in a behind-the-ear model.
Until now…
The smallest hearing aids with this revolutionary, new technology
After more innovation and research, the engineers at Oticon have now been able to incorporate DNN technology into in-the-ear hearing aid styles for the very first time, including invisible hearing aids, which are custom made using a mould of your ear. This means they can sit deep within the ear canal for a comfortable feel and discreet look, without compromising on the latest technology. Oticon Own™ is the smallest hearing aid available that incorporates this DNN technology.
In fact, the invisible-in-the-canal style is so discreet that it’s completely invisible for 9 out of 10 users1. Even the larger styles are still able to fit completely in the ear, with no external tubes and wires and come with the added benefit of being able to incorporate Bluetooth® connectivity2.
A world’s first in new hearing aid technology
To find out what upgrading to this groundbreaking, latest hearing aid technology could do for you and your quality of life, or to try state-of-the-art hearing aid technology in one of our clinics, book your free hearing test with one of our experts today.
References:
1. Rumley et al. (2022). Oticon Own evidence. Oticon Whitepaper
2. Oticon Own in-the-canal, in-the canal half-shell & in-the-canal full-shell