Hearing Aid Technology to Eliminate Background Noise
From: Medical Design Technology - 11/02/2017

For hearing aid users, holding a conversation in a busy crowd is impossible:
the unfiltered environment can be a confusion of unwanted voices and annoying
disturbances. Mi Zhang, a Michigan State University assistant professor of
electrical and computer engineering, is developing cutting-edge technology to
solve this problem.

According to the National Institutes of Health, nearly 30 million adults
could benefit from using hearing aids, but research has shown that one in
five of those who should wear them do not, with difficulty in noisy
situations and background noise cited as a common reasoning.

To attack this problem, Zhang and his team are working on developing a smart
hearing aid device that can enhance the clarity of conversation and remove
unwanted sounds in the background.

The researchers hope to work with hearing aid manufacturers to integrate this
new technology with existing products. They plan to deliver the first
prototype by the end of May 2018. 

Read the entire article at:
https://www.rdmag.com/news/2017/11/hearing-aid-technology-eliminate-background-noise

Links:
Mi Zhang
http://www.egr.msu.edu/~mizhang

Quick Statistics about Hearing
https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing

Why do people fitted with hearing aids not wear them?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3665209