Smartphone - Based Hearing Aid
World Health Organization (WHO) states that a number of patients with hearing loss is growing and might reach 2.5 billion people in 25 years. Human dynamic range of hearing is normally about 120 dB. Hearing pathology leads to a narrowed or reduced range. A recent article published in a special issue (Wearable and Unobtrusive Technologies for Healthcare Monitoring) provides an overview of a real-time smartphone app that can mimic the 2 key functions of hearing aids- compression and noise reduction. Such opportunity has never been provided before in realistic audio environments, as commonly used hearing aids do not allow these signal processing modules. Therefore, the developed app gives an opportunity to use smartphone as a virtual hearing aid. Check more details in the original article by the link!