Bluetooth Compatible Hearing Aids
Bluetooth Hearing Aids http://www.betterhearingjax.com
The latest Bluetooth technology as it relates to hearing aids is described by Dr. Jacqueline Olson, Clinical Audiologist at The Jacksonville Hearing and Balance Institute. Dr. Olson describes some of the Bluetooth compatible hearing aids and explains to the audience how the technology works. This segment aired on WTLV in Jacksonville, FL, during First Coast Living.

http://www.youtube.com/user/JaxHearingandBalance

Partial Video Transcript:

And now we see technology is really advancing. You see
things like Bluetooth and whatnot. Is that really getting into the
realm of hearing aids?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. What we see is that a lot of patients
automatically think of cell phones with Bluetooth. But most
patients that wear hearing aids they’re complaints are noisy
environments, like a restaurant, or watching television, and
Bluetooth helps with all of these different environments. And
sometimes people just don’t realize that.

Yeah, how so? How does Bluetooth help?

Well, newer hearing aids are pretty small, as you can see
right here, and what you would do is wear the hearing aid along
with something like a streamer, and the streamer would then fit
around your neck.

It just looks like you’re wearing an iPod.

Basically, yes. So it’s not something that’s big, clunky,
and draws a lot of attention to you. And these come in different
colors. What that allows it to do, the technology from the hearing
aid connects with the streamer and then the streamer connects with
anything that’s Bluetooth. For example, your GPS in the car, or
your cell phone. Or if you’re at the gym working out, instead of
wearing headphones you would be streaming Bluetooth from the
streamer, your iPod, and the hearing aid, which is really neat.

Anything that has to wire directly into it, like the iPod
Nanos, instead of plugging the headphones, you would plug this
directly into the bottom, here. And then your hearing aids become
your digital headphones. Which is really nice.

[amazed] Wow.

Then men won’t usually come in complaining that they can’t
hear their wives. They’ll usually come in and complain they can’t
hear the TV.

[laughter]

With something like this, you would plug this into your
television. And this would sit behind your television. And whenever
you wanted to hear the TV, all you would have to do is press one
button. It’s very, very easy. It’s pretty accessible to just about
anyone.

And what does that box do?

This transmits the signal from the TV into a Bluetooth
signal so that it can communicate with the Bluetooth streamer.

I see people walking around with the big Bluetooth thing —
that’s just like a normal thing now.

Absolutely.

People just walk around with them like it’s no big deal, and
this is way cooler and way smaller.

Yeah, this is much more discreet. This only needs to be out
if you’re talking on the phone, because this then becomes your
microphone. And like you said, most people would think this would
be like an iPod or something like that. It’s actually opened up the
world to a lot of linking with technologies. I have a 95-year-old
that’s asked for her birthday to get an iPad so she can Skype with
her grandchildren, now that she syncs up with her streamer.

Cool.

Technologically, I don’t know a lot. You say ‘sync,’ and I –
– kind of — understand what you’re talking about, but I’m sure a
lot of people out there would be like, what does that mean? Is that
hard to figure out?

No, not at all. We will actually prepare everything in the
office, and it’s very, very easy. The streamer, this is one of the
more complicated ones. As you can see it doesn’t have that many
buttons on it. We deactivate buttons and ease into the things.
Again, we try to keep the patients’ interests in mind, so if you’re
coming in to me with a cell phone, a beeper, a pager, everything
else, I know that you can handle it.