I understand that hearing aids, as a medical device, are a bit of a racket, costing thousands. But, some new policy is in the works that favours consumer tech innovation. Anyone knowledgeable?
Yeah, the OTC (over-the-counter) hearing aid act passed in 2017 [1]. It says the FDA has to release reduced regulations for the sale of hearing aids OTC by August 2020. There will be a bunch of new players, e.g. Bose HearPhones and maybe even Apple (checkout Live Listen).
The challenge will be how to fit a hearing aid without an audiologists help. This will be especially difficult for older people.
Hopefully it will bring down the price of hearing aids substantially though.
That's actually not a bad idea, a lot of people already have headphones with integrated microphones and processors.
Noise cancellation headphones could be easily transformed into hearing aids with a change of the firmware. In fact, they could be excellent hearing aids, because they probably have more computing power than the average professional hearing aid.
