@Q-Checker wrote:
Re: testing hearing with a Smart Phone. Your clever app does not account for ambient noise in the test situation; audiological testing booths do. Your suggestion might serve best as a screening device in my opinion. Oh -- forgot to note that there are still people around who do not own costly Smart Phones (like me) and that audiological screening (not testing) can usually be done without cost. Complete audiological testing also involves repeating words, including those masked by noise. There are a few other technical issues that would need to be addressed by an audiologist (which I am not).
You might want to check the cost of smartphones. Mine's an LG Premier Pro that combined with a full year's service cost $59.99 when I got it through HSN. (It would have been around $64 with sales tax added, but HSN had sent me a $10 off coupon so I ended up paying a bit less than $54 for it. What do I get for that? Two cameras, an 8 mp rear facing one and a 5 mp front facing one. I can also shoot full HD video with it in addition to high quality photos. A GPS unit that helps me go pretty much anywhere. A voice recorder. A portable gaming device. A really bright flashlight. An FM radio. A way to browse the Internet, check my email or social media from just about anywhere. An MP3 player. A clock and calendar. And more. If you think I overpaid (and remember I paid less than $54 for a full year of doing all of that) then we have vastly different ideas on what constitutes "costly." Oh, and did I mention I can also use it as a phone? You can buy more basic smartphones that could easily handle an app like I suggest for less than $30. And since the phone wouldn't need to be activated for use as a phone you wouldn't even have any additional monthly costs ever.
Hearing aids are relatively simple devices. They're a microphone, a digital processor, an equalizer, an amp, and a speaker. Earbuds and a smartphone give you all of that and more. The processing capability of a smartphone is many times greater than the processor in even the best hearing aid. Absolutely anything a hearing aid does can be done by a smartphone and ear buds given the right app. You can buy both the earbuds and a smartphone for less than $100. Compare that to the costs of a "typical" hearing aid.
As to the ambient noise issue, many/most earbuds block much of that. I tend to think most people would do the test in a quieter part of their home also. The advantage of doing it in the home is the person can do it while relaxed. They can repeat it multiple times. The more they take the test the more accurate the result would be. With the right software/app a smartphone combined with earbuds gives you everything you get in a vastly more expensive hearing aid at a fraction of the cost. Cost, as has been pointed out by most posters here, is a huge issue but doesn't have to be. There are some app makers now making apps like I suggested (Petralex being one such developer) and more are coming. The hearing aid marketplace is about to undergo a seismic shift as more and more software makers develop hearing aid apps for use with smartphones.
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