Feature
Communication Disorders Technology
March 19, 2007
IU spin-off company helps make hearing aids more effective
Charles Watson, Daniel Maki, Diane Kewley-Port, and James Miller (clockwise from top left) of Communication Disorders Technology, Inc.
Nearly 28 million Americans are hearing impaired. But only 1 out of 5 people who could benefit from a hearing aid actually wears one. That could change soon, though, thanks to a hearing-aid training program being developed by Bloomington-based Communication Disorders Technology, Inc. (CDT), a spin-off company founded in 1989 by three faculty members from Indiana University.
Using a hearing aid effectively can be tricky, so many people who need a hearing aid don't use one, according to Charles Watson, CDT co-founder and professor emeritus of speech and hearing sciences at IU.
"Hearing loss means not only diminished sensitivity to sound but also having a harder time distinguishing between sounds. A hearing aid may magnify sound, but it won't necessarily help you make sense of what you hear," said Watson, president of CDT. "Hearing effectively with an aid requires listening in a different way, to different sound cues and that takes training and practice."
Effective training offered by hearing aid manufacturers, retailers, and clinics could result in many more hearing aids being actually worn rather than left in the dresser drawer. Research has shown that as many as 30 percent of hearing aids suffer just such a fate. Seeing an opportunity to reverse that trend, Watson, the project leader, Dr. James Miller, and their colleagues at CDT have spent three years developing a program called the Speech Perception Assessment and Training System (SPATS).
SPATS is a computer-based program designed for hearing specialists, hearing aid wearers and recipients of cochlear implants--devices implanted in the ear that stimulate the auditory nerve. The system is meant to help users learn how to distinguish between amplified sounds and better recognize words, phrases, and sentences. For example, one training session requires the user to listen to a sentence against background noise roughly equivalent to normal restaurant sounds. The user then picks out the words in the sentence from a list on the screen. Using similar methods, other sessions help listeners recognize speech sounds under various levels of noise interference.
"Currently when you first get a hearing aid, the clinician or hearing-aid dealer who sells it to you will set it up it and have you return after you've used it for a while for some for some further adjustment," Watson said. "SPATS will make it possible to offer systematic training in how to listen through a hearing aid."
With the aid of two rounds of funding from the National Institutes of Health, SPATS is in the final stages of development and testing. Within the next year, Watson hopes that SPATS will hit the market and catch on among hearing aid manufacturers, audiology clinics, and hearing labs around the world.
"The national population is aging, and more and more people are starting to need help with hearing," Watson said. "We think that SPATS will help the hearing impaired make better use of the latest developments in hearing aids and implants, and may even have a significant impact on how companies design the new technology."
