Oticon is pleased to announce it will be the first hearing aid company to incorporate the new Audible Contrast Threshold (ACT™) diagnostic test, invented by Interacoustics Research Unit (IRU), into its Oticon Genie 2 fitting software. The move affirms Oticon’s commitment to supporting hearing care professionals to conduct more personalised and effective hearing aid fittings and ensuring better outcomes for hearing aid users.
The problem:
ACT has been developed to address the number one challenge with hearing loss experienced by 1 in 5 of the world’s population: Difficulty hearing speech in background noise. Going beyond the traditional audiogram, the ACT diagnostic test is a significant opportunity for the field of audiology. It will objectively quantify hearing in noise ability for people with or without hearing loss. ACT is a simple, evidence-based method to diagnose hearing in noise difficulties, a well-known challenge for hearing care professionals globally.
The solution:
Thanks to the introduction of ACT, hearing care professionals will have additional diagnostic information to provide a more personalised solution quickly and easily for specific hearing loss and to optimally fit a hearing aid the first time. Through diagnostic integration, the Oticon Genie 2 fitting software will automatically and immediately calculate the optimal amount of help a client needs in noise.
Based on the language-independent ACT test which takes an average of 2 minutes to conduct, the software auto-generates personalised help-in-noise settings, providing the correct dose of ‘contrast’ to better separate speech from noise, based on a person’s ACT value. The prescription enables hearing care professionals to fully deploy the advanced capabilities of Oticon hearing aids (Oticon Real and onwards) in the most effective way. The integration is expected to be available in the next release of the Genie 2 fitting software in 2024.
Thomas Behrens, Vice President of Audiology, Oticon comments: “At Oticon, we have dedicated decades of research into BrainHearing™, and have demonstrated the considerable effort for hearing aid users to understand speech in complex noise environments. Hearing aids should support a user to tackle this important challenge optimally and with an ACT assessment, hearing care professionals can ensure our advanced hearing aids do that to the best of their ability. Embracing the new ACT diagnostic test, we are challenging the conventions to explore a new way of working with hearing care and improve the benefit of hearing aids for our users from the first fit. ACT redefines how we can compensate for hearing loss, and we are proud to be the first company to make the introduction and make strong contributions to making it a new industry standard.”
Oticon is renowned for its research into hearing aid technology that can support hearing aid users to thrive in complex listening environments. For the 7 years that ACT has been under development, Oticon has been supporting this research initiative, as well as taken the lead in developing an evidence-based prescription of Oticon hearing aids using ACT values. For the past 2 years, Oticon has worked alongside the IRU team and the Eriksholm Research Centre, also under the Demant umbrella, to clinically trial ACT, heading up the biggest clinical study Oticon has ever conducted, spanning several countries around the world. For more details on the trial, visit: https://www.oticon.global/act
EDITOR: As someone who suffers with difficulty with hearing speech in background noise, I'm really pleased to be able to share this wonderful news!
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