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Phonak launch new Spice Entry level products Dalia and Naida S I

April 11th, 2012 by Paul Minikin
"Hearing Aid Audiologist and Owner of Digital Hearing Care"

Phonak have released some entry level products to the Spice range of hearing aids, the Dalia and Naida S I. This means the current range of Phonak hearing aids right through the range is all now based on the Spice chipset.

Phonak Dalia has four channels and up to four manual programs. It has the benefit of SoundRecover, Ultrazoom Essential, NoiseBlock and WhistleBlock.

Phonak Dalia is available as a BTE and ITE down to CIC with up to four power levels depending on model, that’s M, P, SP and UP. Dalia is aimed at customers looking for a no frills product with good sound quality and no requirement for wireless additions and automatic functions.

Phonak Naida S I has a similar feature set as the Dalia but is a perfect budget choice for customers with a severe or profound hearing loss wanting super power BTE hearing aids.

ComPilot – Phonak have also announced that due to the great success of the ComPilot wireless streamer they will be phasing out the older iCom at the end of April. ComPilot has proved to be a very popular choice for clients wearing the latest Phonak hearing aids, on offer compared to the iCom is improved sound quality, better battery life and voice alerts.

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Local Skydiving Champion and Digital Hearing Care Ambassador Laura Muller Goes for Gold

April 11th, 2012 by Paul Minikin
"Hearing Aid Audiologist and Owner of Digital Hearing Care"

Local Skydiving champion and celebrity ambassador for Digital Hearing Care Laura Muller has been up to her winning ways again. Laura, 22, is part of the UK Sky Diving team Hyrrokkin and competes at international level in her chosen sport.

It is the early part of the competition season, there are five more competitions between now and the UK National Skydiving Championship in August, but already the first competition in the season Laura and her skydiving chums have won gold at the Bodyflight World Challenge, which boasts a position as the premier indoor skydiving world event at the world’s largest indoor skydiving centre, Bodyflight Bedford. Laura is pictured far left with her team mates.

The competition attracts media and participants from around the world, including the UK, USA, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, France and Spain, with participants competing to win within their own categories. The categories are (from the least to most experienced) Rookie, A, AA and AAA. Laura won gold in AA. This year had a record breaking number of teams competing.

Laura is also aiming for gold in the UK National Skydiving Championships in August. It is the biggest competition per jumping population in the world. Teams come to compete over a long weekend in August, similar to the world challenge but in the air not in the wind tunnel.

Regular followers of our blog will recognise Laura and her story. Laura featured in various local and regional newspapers, local radio and national magazines because of her inspiring journey in the skydiving world.

Laura has approximately 50% hearing loss which hasn’t hampered her ambitions one bit, she wears Phonak Ambra CIC hearing aids which are very discreet and packed with some of the most sophisticated technology available, supplied and maintained by her hearing professional Paul Minikin of Digital Hearing Care. They enable Laura to hear better than ever before in her social life and day to day routine, and to help her perform at her best in the sport she loves. Click here for previous post.

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Buying hearing aids on the internet and overseas

April 9th, 2012 by Paul Minikin
"Hearing Aid Audiologist and Owner of Digital Hearing Care"

Is it ever a good idea to buy via the internet without first seeking professional advice? My answer would be no. Hearing aids should in my opinion ABSOLUTELY only ever be considered for purchase after a full and detailed hearing assessment.

There are a number of good reasons for thinking this, not having a full hearing assessment with a hearing professional can disadvantage you in a number of ways. It can lead to;

- A  failure to identify a surgically or medically treatable hearing loss
- A failure to diagnose medical conditions of the ear
- A poor choice of hearing instrument not matching your needs
- A deficient correction of your hearing loss
- Noise injury through improper amplification
- An absence of specific features to maximise your individual needs

Choosing hearing aids is not like buying a television or a toaster. There are lots of electrical devices you can buy that you can plug into the mains and away you go. Hearing aids are a very different proposition.

You need good quality professional advice before even contemplating buying hearing aids, and once you have purchased your hearing aids, a factor more important than any other in my opinion is that you have a hearing professional on hand to offer support. Emotional and technical, initially and throughout the life of your hearing aids, to ensure you get the very best results from your purchase.

So should you buy hearing aids on eBay or elsewhere without advice? Absolutely not! Should you buy hearing aids from the internet within your own country or elsewhere in the world without first consulting a local hearing professional locally in a face to face consultation and being given good advice, a full hearing assessment and talking about needs and benefits? I would say this should never be considered an option.

The very best way to buy hearing aids is to approach a reputable local (ideally independent) hearing aid audiologist in your area, have a full hearing assessment, take their advice on what products suit you best and will give the best results, and then buy hearing aids from them. They are going to be best placed to look after your long term needs.

So what about all these hearing aid websites on the internet? At Digital Hearing Care we are a very prominent hearing aid supplier in the north of England with a worldwide internet presence and a very comprehensive website filled with useful information. As such we receive enquiries from all over the UK and worldwide asking us to supply hearing aids outside our trading area. We can help enquirers outside our area in various ways depending on where you live.

If you live within the borders of the UK we can help you. We have organised over a number of years a UK wide network of independent local hearing aid audiologists of high repute that have the same high ethical, professional standards as ourselves.

All those involved in our network are happy to supply hearing aids at the same great pricing as on our website, with the promise to you of a high level of aftercare and the widest choice of hearing aids available on the UK market. If you want to arrange a free hearing assessment and want great advice we are sure to be able to put you in touch with someone local to you to address your needs.

If you live outside the UK we may still be able to help you – It is more difficult but not impossible. As a business we are absolutely not prepared to supply hearing aids in a box without any kind of assessment being performed and an aftercare package being in place to ensure ongoing repairs and adjustment of your hearing aids, there is just too much at stake for you to consider this course of action.

It is an absolute minimum requirement that before we even consider supplying to an overseas customer that a full and thorough professional hearing assessment has taken place, that advice has been given, and ideally that you have had a demonstration of the type of hearing aids you are most suited to.

For most we would ordinarily expect you then to buy hearing aids from your hearing professional at this point but this sometimes does not happen. There are parts of the world where hearing aids are particularly expensive to buy (particularly in comparison to our hearing aid prices), and at this point we sometimes receive enquiries from overseas customers wishing to purchase from us and save what can be a substantial amount of money.

We can understand the attraction of people wishing to save money, but there are a number of factors to be considered and overcome before we could consider supplying to an overseas customer.

If you are considering buying hearing aids this way we can only supply IF you have aftercare organised locally. You should expect to have to pay for aftercare that would ordinarily be free in with the cost of purchasing from a local company, the local professional needs to earn a living after all, why should they look after you for free?

If you can’t find a hearing professional locally prepared to offer (and charge you) for aftercare we just can’t supply to you. However if you can source good local aftercare you should still consider carefully how much money you can save by buying hearing aids in this way with the additional cost of aftercare, the costs could potentially mount up.

IF you have had a thorough local and full hearing assessment AND you have assured aftercare at a cost you have determined and assessed as affordable (including the initial cost of the hearing aids) AND you know exactly which hearing aids are suitable for you we MAY be able to help you. At that stage I would need a copy of a recent audiogram to ensure the hearing aids deemed suitable were in fact appropriate for your needs.

As a company we do not actively promote overseas enquiries but where we can help (and there are lots of ‘ifs’, ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’), we will always try our best to help, or at the very least try to give you the best advice we can.

If you have any questions about anything in this post please do not hesitate to contact us.

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Widex to bring IIC hearing aid to market

April 5th, 2012 by Paul Minikin
"Hearing Aid Audiologist and Owner of Digital Hearing Care"

Widex have announced they are to launch an invisible in canal (IIC) hearing aid to the UK market in May. Up to press the smallest Widex hearing aids have been CIC (completely in canal) size, notably the CIC in the Clear range of Widex hearing aids has made use of all the wireless capabilities that the chip offers, making Widex a real challenger in the technology stakes.

Widex as a manufacturer tend to offer great build quality and really good technology that works well, although it has to be said that they tend not to be the first out of the gate when it comes to new ideas, this has been borne out with the advent of the latest trend in sub CIC hearing aids that are to all intents and purposes invisible in the ear.

Starkey were the first manufacture in recent times to offer an IIC product with the Starkey SoundLens, followed by the Siemens iMini, then the Phonak Nano and recently the Oticon Intiga i. We understand Unitron have something planned soon in this market which leaves GN ReSound out of all the manufacturers not offering or imminently offering an IIC product, maybe this is something in the pipeline?

We anticipate the new Widex IIC product will not have all the wireless facilities of the Clear range because of space constrictions inherent in this type of product, but maybe we will be surprised…. We shall keep you posted on developments with the new product as they emerge.

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Invisible Hearing Aids

March 26th, 2012 by Paul Minikin
"Hearing Aid Audiologist and Owner of Digital Hearing Care"

Since the arrival of the Starkey SoundLens nearly two years ago (June 2010) heralded a new era in invisible hearing aids a lot has happened in the market, it seems like a good point at which to reassess the subject.

The Starkey SoundLens (AKA OtoLens) was the first of its kind, a hearing aid that could truly be called invisible. Up until this point the hearing aid manufacturers and some national chains in particular had all been guilty of marketing their CIC (completely in canal) hearing aids as invisible.

Whilst it cannot be denied that CIC hearing aids are very neat and cosmetically attractive it is stretching it a bit to call them invisible. Maybe invisible from some angles and very discreet from others. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue or seem very appetising from a marketing point of view but factually it is more appropriate.

Then along comes Starkey SoundLens, truly invisible hearing aids that sit so deep in the ear canal as to be invisible from any angle. What a proposition!…. So where is the catch?

The nature of the fitting of this type of product is that a very deep impression of the ear canal is needed for the manufacturing process, in fact the impression has to reach far deeper than a standard ear impression, pretty much touching the ear drum.

It can be uncomfortable for the client to take such a deep impression, and quite frankly there are a lot of hearing aid audiologists out there incapable of taking a safe impression this deep, or unqualified, or just fearful of the process.

Also for these invisible hearing aids to be suitable, your ear canal needs to be wide and tall enough to accept the minimum dimensions of the Starkey SoundLens, and other things can rule out being suitable such as waxy ear canals, tight bends in the ear canal, perforated eardrums etc.

However, once we take all this into account, around 5 or 6 out of 10 ear canals are capable of being fitted with Starkey SoundLens. At Digital Hearing Care we are among a small number of specialists in the north of England able to offer this product.

Since the Starkey SoundLens was launched a number of manufacturers have brought to market invisible hearing aids to try to compete with Starkey. None have gone down the route of sitting so deeply in the ear, rather adopting a more mass market approach.

All subsequent similar products could be classed a sub CIC, sitting deeper in the ear canal than a traditional CIC with components reduced in size, new shell and faceplate processes designed to aid in manufacturing more discreet hearing aids.

These products include, in order of release, the Siemens iMini, the Phonak Nano, and the newly released Oticon Intiga i. Other manufacturers are, we are promised, due to release similar products soon.

Generally they are marketed as invisible hearing aids or near invisible, and depending on space in the ear canal, tend to sit so deep in the ear canal and in deep shadow that they blend right in and are difficult to see from any angle.

This type of product is suitable for more clients, the estimate being around 8+ ear canals out of 10. An advantage is a very deep impression is not required, so the less able or qualified hearing aid audiologists (particularly from the national chains) are able in some cases to supply some of the very discreet hearing aids that we can as a matter of course.

The situation has not changed in 2 years that the deepest fitting and most invisible hearing aid is still the Starkey SoundLens, and this position is not likely to change any time soon in my opinion, the biggest issue being that the majority of hearing aid audiologists in the UK are unqualified or incapable of taking the necessary very deep impressions of the ear canal.

However, the newer products out there recently launched widen the scope for people looking for invisible hearing aids to a bigger audience. Our stance is, as you might expect, that if you desire invisible hearing aids that you approach us in the first instance. Whether you are suitable or unsuitable for such products we can offer all the products available on the UK market.

If you are outside our trading area we may know a hearing professional in your locality we can recommend, please just ask!

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