Hearing aid: an innovative device manufactured between Toulouse and Montauban
Audiocap is a project carried out between Toulouse and Montauban. Its purpose is to improve the comfort of people with hearing aids when they are in a noisy environment thanks to an algorithm that filters out ambient sounds. The clinical study begins.
For the WHO, this is a public health priority. Beyond 70 years, 40% of the population has a hearing problem and among 18-24 year olds, hearing problems multiply as a result of “sound trauma”, understand the music too loud in the ears.
From Toulouse to Montauban, a consortium has been mobilizing on the subject for two years under the aegis of Innov’pole santé and the Toulouse University Hospital as part of the Audiocap project (€ 1.2M including € 600K from ERDF European funds) . It brings together IRIT researchers, manufacturers and doctors. At the Rive Gauche clinic, Professor Bernard Fraysse, ENT surgeon is leading the project. “One of the common problems among deaf patients is the difficulty in understanding conversations in noisy environments that they understand when they are already on hearing aids. We are talking about presbycusis, a symptom that particularly affects the elderly. With Audiocap, we are improving their care thanks to very fine adjustment carried out upstream, according to the patient’s needs. The caregivers follow for this on Archéan Technologies, the Montalbanian company specializing in signal processing. “We are using artificial intelligence algorithms capable of filtering ambient sounds to reduce ancillary noise and promote intelligibility”, explains Xavier Aumont, CEO of Archéan Technologies.
Launch of the clinical study
To test the effectiveness of the algorithm, around thirty patients from the Left Bank clinic will be included in early October in a first phase of clinical study. In a cabin designed by Archéan and used as a simulator of the future hearing aid, they will be fitted with headphones and then exposed to noise, as if they were fitted with Audiocap. “We will base ourselves on several parameters”, specifies Pr Fraysse, the percentage of words understood by the patient, the listening effort, that is to say their reaction time and finally from a scale of 1 to 10 we will subjectively measure the quality of perceived listening. ”
To apply you must be at least 18 years old, not suffer from cognitive disorders and feel a loss of understanding in noise.
A second study including 150 patients and starting with several CHU will then be. It will make it possible to compare a group fitted with a conventional prosthesis and a group fitted with Audiocap.
The prototype of the prosthesis is expected in 2022. It will be the first medical device of this type relocated in France and manufactured in… Occitanie.