Award winning technologies of the future
Award
Each year, innovators and inventors gather for the Edison Awards in New York City, USA to celebrate leading developments in technology, engineering, marketing, and design.
Futurism Media recently reported on some of the innovations that are changing the way we see the world.
This year’s event focused on cutting-edge developments in medicine, energy, entertainment, and many other categories. Alongside robotics, ultrafast rechargeable batteries, cameras and virtual reality, sound and hearing also had a place in the spotlight.
Specifically, a gold award was granted to Oticon USA’s Oticon Opn in the health and wellness subcategory of hearing technology. Oticon Opn is considered the first hearing aid to connect to the Internet of Things (IoT), bringing the hearing assistive device that was first developed over a century ago into the twenty-first century.
Oticon Opn can connect to any other device within the IoT, such as a smartphone or speaker, the article reports. “If someone was hearing impaired, they’d have to take out their hearing aids to listen to music through headphones,” says Maureen Doty Tomasula, a senior product and marketing manager at Oticon. “It may not even be loud enough. Then they’d have to turn it up really loud. But with this, it streams directly through their hearing aids.”
Using its high level of connectivity, the device can also help users to organize their lives. For example, the device can be programmed to send an alert if the batteries are low. In addition, in terms of performance, 81% of users said they understood more with less effort, in a voluntary survey carried out by Oticon.
Source: Futurism Media-News Company; Oticon.
