Southwest Florida's Health and Wellness Magazine Health and Wellness Articles
The first hearing device that revolves around you.
By Dr. Noël Crosby, Au.D.
It’s not often that a major change comes along in hearing aid technology. Hearing aid manufacturers periodically introduce new products
and the new product is always better; however, the improvements are usually only incremental in nature. It is rare when technology improvements with hearing instruments can be measured in leaps. Oticon a leading hearing instrument manufacturer has introduced a revolutionary new hearing instrument that has proven to be leaps ahead of the other major hearing instruments manufacturers. This new hearing instrument is called the Oticon Opn™! Until now, traditional hearing aids haven’t been able to process sound fast enough to help you hear all the way around you. They would focus just on the speech directly in front of you, and suppress everything else. This would help you hear the person you were looking at, but not much else. It wasn’t perfect. But until now, it’s been the best that hearing aids have been able to do. No more tunnel hearing. That has all changed with the Oticon Opn™. The Opn™ is Oticon’s biggest technical breakthrough ever. Its processor chip is 50 times faster than anything Oticon has ever built. That’s fast enough to break out of the tunnel and help you hear in all directions; the way you were born to hear. And that’s a giant leap in hearing device technology. When The Opn™ opens up your hearing to a full 360 degrees, a lot of great things happen. It adjusts and balances all the sounds around you, not just the ones directly in front of you. The Opn™ separates speech from noise and lets you focus on what’s important. The Opn™ works with your brain to process sounds exceptionally fast, you get better speech understanding, less listening fatigue, and you may remember more of your conversations, allowing you to shift focus from one speaker to another, even in complex listening environments.
The Oticon Opn™ is also the world’s first internet-connected hearing device. The Oticon Opn™ syncs seamlessly with your iPhone, turning your hearing aids into a wireless headset that you can control with an easy to-use Oticon ON App – available on
the App Store® and soon on Google Play™-. The App also has a “locate my hearing aids” feature if they are lost. It is possible to stream sound from your TV and radio directly into these hearing aids. You can use your iPhone as a remote control to regulate their volume, to change programs or to simply turn off your hearing aids. Through a unique Oticon cloud solution, Oticon Opn™ can be linked to the If This Than That (IFTTT) network. These hearing instruments are able to notify you when an e-mail is received, or inform you when someone rings your doorbell, all this is possible with Oticon Opn™.
Most people who I have fit with the Oticon Opn™ are experiencing a remarkable improvement in how well they are hearing. I have to tell you that I have never heard the type of comments about any other hearing aid in my 30 years of being an audiologist. Some of the comments that my patients have made are:
• I feel like the world has opened up.
• I am hearing 50% better than I did with my old hearing aids
• I am not interested in purchasing a premium product but if you can show me that it is better I might consider it. 10 minutes later I hear “I am interested in purchasing this hearing aid”.
• I am hearing more and better than I ever have.
Please contact my office at 941-474-8393 to schedule your free in office demo of this remarkable device.
PROFESSIONAL BIO
Dr. Noël Crosby, Au.D., owner and audiologist at Advanced Hearing Solutions in Englewood, FL is a licensed professional whose 30 year career has been devoted to helping people of all ages hear and understand more clearly. Dr. Crosby received her BS and MS degrees from FSU and her Doctorate in Audiology from UF. Her credibility as an authority grew during her tenure as the Director of Audiology at the Silverstein Institute in Sarasota, FL from 1991-1998. Today, in addition to managing a successful audiology practice, Dr. Crosby is involved in creating hearing loss awareness through her jewelry and accessory company AuDBling.com. She has served and is serving on various professional boards and committees and was president of the Florida Academy of Audiology in 2000 and 2010. She has been married to Michael for 26 years and has one daughter.
