Prominent start-ups in the hearing impairment area
Innovation
The media, community and events organization group Tech.co recently ran a piece on five start-ups that are working on providing new solutions for the deaf and hard of hearing.
According to the World Health Organization’s media center, as of 2017, 360 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss, and 32 million of these are children. Millions of people, including in the most economically developed countries, do not have access to hearing assistive devices and technology. Tech.co looked at some of the start-ups that are hoping to make their way into this area of significant unmet medical needs.
New York City-based start-up Audicus provides direct-to-consumer devices and has focused on being able to help their customers identify the exact level of hearing loss they have. Audicus hearing assessment tech enables users to check up on their hearing online, and at no cost. Korean start-up Sovoro offers a voice-operated typing and transmission service that can be used to provide real-time captioning.
In the biotech area, two start-ups are hoping to find revolutionary ways of treating hearing loss: Frequency Therapeutics is working on stimulating cells in order to generate healthy tissue that can help people hear, and Decibel Therapeutics is looking into multiple avenues with the aim of restoring the inner ear.
Lastly, California-based Ava offers a voice-recognition app that can be downloaded by two people or even by a group of people, and the software then transcribes the conversation into a series of text messages, enabling the person with impaired hearing to follow – and most importantly to join in.
