DrCraigKasper.com

Dr. Kasper is Interviewed for the Boston Globe

Read Cindy Atoji's article titled "These Headphones Keep Noise Down" from this week's Boston Globe.

Dr. Kasper Featured in the NJ Star Ledger

As 35 year old reporter Vicky Hyman from the New Jersey Star Ledger reports, hearing loss touches everyone. In her article she describes her initial experiences with hearing instruments. Click here to read the entire article.

Sneak Peak: One Manufacturer Offering New Levels of Connectivity

When it is formally released in June, Oticon’s Epoq is promising to be the most advanced personal connectivity device on the market for those with hearing impairment. Aside from a new digital platform that should offer enhanced communication ability in varied listening environments, company representatives are starting to show a demo device that looks like a simplified iPod. This device, known as the “Streamer” is what Oticon has developed to morph the old school “hearing aid” into a piece of multi-purpose communications equipment. The Streamer allows for wireless/ Bluetooth connectivity between the ear level worn instruments and essentially any other peripheral device that is Bluetooth ready. The Streamer, which is worn around the neck, creates a Personal Area Network so the user can connect to their Bluetooth mobile phone, PDA, mp3 player, TV, computer, etc. Sound is transmitted to the ears and is amplified according to the parameters established for your hearing loss. Oticon believes the Epoq will be priced similarly to some of the higher end hearing instruments on the market today. Perhaps this would mean the end of the “connectivity disconnect” for those using hearing instruments?

Mail-Order Hearing Instruments Revisited

In 1999, my colleagues and I at New York Presbyterian Hospital evaluated an interesting patient. So interesting, in fact, that it resulted in a case study published in The Hearing Journal. The paper, titled “Mail-Order Hearing Aids and Patient Safety: A Case Study”, was based on a patient with long-standing history of hearing loss.

For financial considerations, she decided to purchase a hearing instrument through mail order instead of relying on the services of her local hearing healthcare provider. Ultimately she sustained a perforated eardrum and infection due to a piece of the device that became dislodged in her ear. Our conclusion was that “no avenue exist(ed) to ensure either patient safety or satisfaction in the generic device, mail-order approach”. The case study clearly demonstrated “that unregulated sale of mail-order hearing aids may endanger potential users”.

The Convergence of Mobile Communications and Hearing Instruments? - Part II

This is Part II in a series of brief articles exploring the convergence of ear-level communication devices and hearing instruments.

Ear physician and entrepreneur, Rodney Perkins, founded Sound ID in 2000. The California-based company has introduced the PSS, or Personal Sound System, an ear-level technology that offers connectivity to various Bluetooth devices as well as providing amplification of environmental sounds.

The PSS is available in three models: the Professional version, Sound Flavors and Sound Mate. The Professional and Sound Flavors devices offer four modes: Phone mode, CompanionLink mode, One2One mode and Amplification mode. The Sound Mate offers the same features minus the amplification mode.

The PSS systems all communicate wirelessly with Bluetooth enabled mobile phones. In the CompanionLink mode, a small wireless microphone that is worn, by a spouse for example, communicates with the EarModule. The direct audio signal from the remote microphone aids communication in noisy environments by reducing the signal-to-noise ratio. To take this one step further, if two people are wearing EarModules (with the embedded microphone) they have the ability to communicate wirelessly at a distance or in difficult to communicate environments, restaurants are notoriously challenging.

Both the Professional and SoundFlavors versions allow for environmental amplification, as well. So if the user has a mild degree of hearing loss they could switch into the Amplification mode to give their ears a bit of a boost.

The Sound ID devices also perform some very “hearing instrument-like” processing of sound. The company claims it’s proprietary technology “compensates for auditory distortions resulting from background noise”. Sound ID believes the technology it has been developing is the first to function at the crossroads of communications, medical technology and entertainment. As far as multi-purpose ear-level devices, the PSS offers one more path to communicate more effectively through multiple modes of operation.