SECURBORATION, INC. — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase II: NIDCD

Description

This project describes a novel approach to automate and individualize the signal processing strategy for hearing aidsHAthat can result in improved speech intelligibility in background noisegreater user satisfaction and acceptance for HAsand reduce barriers to affordable hearing health careThe proposed Individualized Signal Processing StrategyISPSis based on individual performance on categorical perception tasks for speech stimuliThis differs from traditional methods based on sophisticated gain models built upon average perceptionperformanceand preference dataThe ability to determine one s ISPS automaticallyrapidly and remotely can result in dramatic cost savings and greater accessibility to hearing health care for patients who cannot afford it or for those who lack easy access to the necessary expertiseThese technical achievements have the potential to radically change HA service delivery models yet can be implemented within existing business models and in concert with current practitionersThe ISPS method effectively replaces target based HA fittinge gNAL NLwith individualized speech based parameter adjustmentThe proposed work follows successful completion of our pilot project and builds upon the research team s prior research on novel fitting methods for cochlear implantCIdevices recently acquired by CochlearLtdFollowing the successful implementation of ISPS and integration with commercial HA software in the pilot studywe demonstrated feasibility including a field study in which performance outcomes for the ISPS method were as good as a conventional HA fitting method and only took a fraction of the timedespite ISPS having no prior knowledge of patient characteristics and no audiogramSuccessful maturation and commercialization of the ISPS technology in Phase II will address several barriers identified in the previous RFA DCincluding physicalinfrastructureand knowledge barriersby allowing remote or self fitting HAseconomic barriersby reducing overall costsand cultural barriersby providing easy access to HA fitting for patients who tend to avoid professional helpThis Phase II project will develop an operational ISPS method byintegrating ISPS with hardware software systems of our industry partnersrefine and enhance the ISPS method to improve efficiency and effectiveness of fitting hearing instrumentsbuild support for the use of ISPS in multiple marketplacesandevaluate the technology through field trials in different service delivery environments by comparing outcomes with ISPS fitting to those achieved with traditional prescriptive gain fitting within the same subjectsFollowing successful demonstration of these objectivesa Phase III project will focus on the transition of the technology to support remote and self fitting of hearing instruments