These days, many of our modern devices are tracking us. Sometimes that?s a harmless function: for example, our phones can help us navigate cities, find nearby restaurants, or monitor our physical activity and exercise. But the idea of some app or company knowing your location and what you?re doing can be uncomfortable – especially when the ads you see start to feel a little too personalized! Depending on the kind you use, your hearing aid may be tracking you too. But that?s not a bad thing. In fact, it can make your hearing aids even more effective and improve your quality of life.
Unlike invasive ads or other disconcerting tracking functions on other devices, the tracking features included in some hearing aids are one of the benefits of new hearing aid technology. Location-based functions make them better at canceling out background noise and focusing on the sounds that you want to hear. Some hearing aids use tracking to help you hear in different environments, while others can help you keep tabs on your daily physical and mental activity. So how exactly do hearing aids benefit from tracking features? Which ones give you the benefit of these functions?
Focus On What Matters with Phonak Paradise
When you want to hear someone or something, your natural instinct is to look at it. You naturally focus on the sound that?s in front of you. But that?s not always where the loudest sounds are coming from. Say you?re sitting in a restaurant with a group of friends, and someone across the table is telling a story. You want to hear what they?re saying, but your hearing aids pick up sound from all across the room – which can easily drown out your friend. You unintentionally eavesdrop on the table next to you and miss the whole point of your friend?s story.
Phonak aims to solve this problem using head tracking. When sound is coming into your ears from all around you, Phonak Paradise technology uses your head movements to focus on sound coming from the direction you?re facing. It can even track the way you turn your head to find new sounds to focus on. The myPhonak app give you access to precise controls so you can customize it?s Dynamic Noise Cancellation features and focus on the sound that matters.
Hearing in Any Situation with Oticon More
Your ears take in sound, but your brain turns it into something that makes sense. Hearing loss can deprive your brain of information it would use to understand sound – distinguishing words from random noise, for example.
Oticon More hearing aids are embedded with a Deep Neural Network trained on 12 million real-life sounds. Programmed with over 2,000 sound environments, their tracking features determine the exact one you?re in and the sounds you?re hearing. Listening to a concert in a theatre? Having a conversation on the beach? Taking notes at a conference? Talking on the phone in the car? Oticon More hearing aids are tuned to just the right situation.
But they don?t just give your brain more sound. Using the DNN, Oticon More hearing aids provide your brain with the information it?s missing so it can more easily decipher the sounds it receives, even in noisy environments. They?re designed to mirror the functions of your brain to improve not just your hearing but your comprehension, too.
Tracking Health, Hearing, and Safety with Starkey
To say Starkey experts have put innovative tracking technology into their hearing aids is an understatement. As the name suggests, hearing aids equipped with Starkey Livio Edge AI are cutting-edge in more ways than one!
Starkey?s hearing aids can intelligently adjust settings based on the noise environment they detect around you, but they offer you hassle-free control over those settings, too. Use the Thrive Hearing Control app to fine-tune settings based on custom locations like your office, your gym, and your home. When your hearing aids detect that you?ve entered one of these geotagged locations, they will switch to your custom settings for that specific spot.
Because Livio Edge AI hearing aids are designed to work in conjunction with your smartphone, they operate as an extension of it. And the Thrive Assistant lets you control them with just your voice. But as exciting as these advanced features are, they?re not much good if you can?t find your phone! If you?re like us and frequently misplace your phone, simply ask your Thrive Assistant to help and it will start ringing automatically. The opposite is true, too: if you misplace your hearing aids, your Thrive app can use their tracking features to help you find them!
Healthable tracking features
If something is tracking everything you do, you?d think it would have some feedback or criticism on how you live your life. Livio Edge AI-equipped hearing aids will give you just that (constructively, of course!) based on your physical and mental activity.
Tracking technology gives Starkey hearing aids the ability to count your daily steps and measure the amount of exercise you?re getting. Whether you?re walking or running on the track, working out in the gym, or just out running errands, these hearing aids can help you stay healthy by monitoring the amount of activity you get each day.
Mental exercise is just as important as physical. These hearing aids can track that too! They?ll keep tabs on the amount of time you spend in conversation with others. Actively listening in these conversations helps you keep your mental abilities sharp. Your Thrive app gives you a ?brain score? to let you know how you?re doing.
These same tracking benefits can also help you maintain your independence as you age while giving your loved ones peace of mind. Give them permission to track you in the Thrive Care App and they?ll be able to see your physical and mental activity scores, too. You can also share your location so they can find you if you get lost. Your hearing aids? motion trackers can even detect a fall and alert your specified contacts if you require assistance.
We?re Tracking Better Hearing
While it seems like every gadget we own is tracking us now, that?s not always a bad thing. In fact, it can be a good thing when it comes to your hearing aids! From better situational hearing in different environments to healthable monitoring and convenience features, hearing aid tracking technology can come with all kinds of benefits.
Advanced hearing aids aren?t just gimmicks. Want to see how the innovative features in the latest hearing aids can improve your quality of life? Schedule an appointment with us today!
