Hearing aids without the markup
editorialDevices & Hardware · early attempts · hardest part: engineering, regulatory, distribution
The signal processing is well understood and publishable, the hardware is commodity, and regulatory access in the US recently opened. Almost nothing open exists.
This is editorial, not a record. Registry entries are cited facts about things that exist; an opportunity is our argument about something that does not. The links to existing work are checked against the catalog — the judgment around them is ours, and you should disagree with it where you know better.
Hearing aids were historically bundled with audiologist dispensing, which tied the device price to a service channel. The underlying components — a microphone, a DSP, a receiver, a battery — are commodity electronics, and the fitting algorithms are extensively described in the academic literature. The price has reflected distribution and gatekeeping more than bill of materials.
An open, fittable device: a reference hardware design, an open fitting procedure that a non-specialist can follow safely, and real-ear verification that does not require a clinic. Open DSP research exists in fragments inside academic projects; a person who needs a hearing aid cannot assemble anything from it.
Untreated hearing loss is one of the largest sources of disability worldwide and is strongly associated with social isolation and cognitive decline. It is also unusually tractable: the device does not enter the body and the failure modes are not lethal.
Cross-platform application for acquiring and visualising EEG, EMG, and ECG data from OpenBCI boards.
None cited. Everything above is either reasoning about market structure or a claim you should check yourself. Where we could not source a number, we left it out rather than estimating one.
Last revised 2026-08-05.