Today’s technology is ever evolving and Apple continues to be a leader in this technological advancement. They just announced their newest invention called the LiNX. The LiNX is an innovative hearing aid that is compatible with the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch; it uses Bluetooth technology to wirelessly sync the hearing aid to your Apple mobile device, utilizing iOS 7’s accessibility options for the hearing impaired.
Phone calls, turn-by-turn navigation, music, FaceTime or any other streamed audio is
LiNX by Apple. Photo courtesy of PCMag.com.
wirelessly synced to the hearing aid and played directly into the ear. It’s functionality isn’t limited to smartphone audio use however; they are at the core a hearing aid and function the same way by picking up conversations and surrounding sounds.
The LiNX hearing aids also have a nifty little feature called Live Listen which can turn your iOS device into a microphone. By placing the microphone where you want to focus your listening on, it will stream directly from the microphone to your ear. This enables you to tune out the surrounding noise and focus directly on what you want to hear.
With more than 36 million individuals in the US alone who suffer from hearing loss, this could be a huge breakthrough. Currently, only one in five people who need a hearing aid actually have one, and the average time it takes for those who think they might have a hearing problem to make an appointment with an audiologist is eight years! One of the reasons behind this delay in treatment has been attributed to the stereotypes associated with hearing aids. Apple aims to take away this stereotype of the bulky, ugly hearing aids of the past and replace it with a discreet, streamlined highly technical piece of genius bearing the Apple name.
We are proud to be a supplier of the new LiNX hearing aids. They just could be the future of the hearing aid industry and we believe they can offer a significant benefit to our patients. If you have been putting off getting hearing aids because you just didn’t want to deal with the stigma of them, stop in and see one of our audiologists and we will show you how quiet, small, discreet and to be perfectly honest … how cool these new hearing aids are. Not being able to hear what is going on around you can be disabling so take that first step and see an audiologist who can assess your hearing needs and get you on the right path to being able to hear once again.
