How Does the Cost of Hearing Aids Defy Gravity?

You'ld figure the battery would be the most expensive part and they would be disposable by now.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
Bret Cahill
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A modern hearing aid isn't just an audio amplifier, you know.

Reply to
larwe

But of course, when things get computerized, then the circuitry to adapt to various people's hearing problems goes away, making each hearing aid cheaper to manufacture.

Cost of course is a reflection of how many sales. I have no idea whether hearing aids sales hit the point where costs could drop due to mass manufacturing or not. Going digital might drive up initial costs, but the customizing which likely keeps up the price, would be far easier.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Black

Making it fit into the ear canal has to still be very labor-intensive, albeit the amp. unit and the earmold could be pluggable.

But they still have to have a custom freq. respone.

Cheers! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

The modern ones are DSPs with a programmable frequency response. The cost reflects many different things - for instance the FDA type certification costs which are NOT trivial.

Reply to
larwe

But it _does_ have to be programmed, which kinda obviates the OP's point of making the whole thing disposable.

I'm glad I wore earplugs to those rock concerts. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

Most use disposable zinc-air batteries that are very cheap. You get cards of them at the drug store. It's the very low power DSP electronics and the tiny parts and the certs and the fitting and tuning that are expensive.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

But making it programmable means the set of tiny slider pots can=20 disappear, discrete components that take up space, likely do cost compared= =20 to semiconductors and are likely the components that will go bad.

If you go to programmable, then yes, each hearing aid has to be adjusted=20 to the user, but that's how it is now. But you can then use the same hardware for the full range of users, while now I'm assuming there may be= =20 ranges of hearing aids in order to match someone's hearing without having to have all the bulky external components to cater to every person's=20 hearing problem.

Since people's hearing problems are different, that ends up with multiple= =20 hearing aids to deal with it all, so manufacturing costs can't be=20 consolidated over the full market. A programmable hearing aid does away with that, one for all, and get rid of those external analog=20 components.

Yes they need to be programmed for each user, but that happens now, albeit in a much broader sense, picking the sort of right hearing aid from a variety and then fine tuning using the adjustments that the hearing= =20 aid has.

They could even go to different levels of programming. Use the same=20 hardware, and have fixed programming for a variety of hearing loss=20 problems, yet the same hardware is available for finer adjustment when=20 needed for others (hey and they could even charge more then, just like more serious hearing problems now require a better hearing aid).

Michael

Reply to
Michael Black

Digital programable have been around for at least a decade and the price is _still_ over several thousand dollars.

It's a large world wide market. Maybe the microphone, speaker and fitting cost something but the price should have fallen an order of magnitude by now.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
Bret Cahill

Oddly enough you will find that the units being sold today are not the same models being sold ten years ago. They probably have a two- or three-year development cycle, which means the costs of FDA medical device approval (for US market only) are being amortized across three years only. Apply the same cost structure to other markets, too.

Sure, the manufacturers are making a profit, but it's not as clear as $50 of parts becoming a $8000 hearing aid. (My mother in law just got DSP aids so I've seen the costs firsthand. The list price was $9k, her insurer paid a standard rate of $5500 and that satisfied the vendor. Includes fitting, adjusting, tweaking, etc).

Reply to
larwe

You'd figure glasses would be just a few cents. Glass is cheap.

Reply to
krw

They are! They cost a $1.00 at the dollar store, and I'll bet those robber barons only pay $0.40 wholesale. :-) Mike PS. I buy them 10 at a time, there's always a pair somewhere when I need them.

Reply to
amdx

rs.

My understanding is that besides just bending the freq. response, they can also move the speech band into other areas of the audio spectrum. Some people have simply zero hearing at certain frequencies, you can add all the dBs you want and they won't hear there.

Reply to
larwe

ers.

That's not going to happen for the average person. It's a specialty case,= =20 and likely requires more adjustment on the part of the user than the=20 adjustment to a "regular" hearing aid. You have to adapt to sounds not sounding like they used to.

But that's the case for cheaper hearing aids. WIthout a DSP, there has to= =20 be some other hearing aid that will do this, and with a high level of=20 customization likely.

But since you can program the DSP to do whatever you want, the hardware=20 remains for both the simpler hearing aids and the more complicated ones.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Black

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