when you have something it's possible to take you for granted
for those who don't they feel like something is missing it limits you and
set you back in life so let's talk about hearing loss in the UK alone it's
estimated 750,000 people are living with severe to profound hearing loss
according to the World Health Organization there were approximately 72
million people around the world who could potentially benefit from the EU's
offer here in device such as cochlear implant or hearing aid so when I was
invited about cochlear to see what they're doing to help and change the
lives of those living with hearing loss I jumped at the
opportunity to speak to
various people in order to understand more and help spread the word
we know worldwide there's four hundred sixty six million people living with the disabling
hearing loss which is a phenomenal number when you think about it so in the
UK we know that there's at least 750,000 people living with disabling hearing
loss and people are willing to move forward with technology to improve their
improve the intervention hearing and basically the connectivity with life and
that's exactly what a lot of these recipients want to do they want to
re-engage with life and it's so important because the number of patients
I've met in the past - who've as the hearing loss has declined over
the years they they move into moving away from difficult situations and
family environments and and it's very important sort of implantable hearing
solutions that we can give them that connectivity back into engaging because
living with disabling hearing loss can lead to social isolation early onset
dementia and as well as well-documented and I think actually we've got a an
educational piece to do with audiologists around the world to make
sure that these patients aren't sitting with hearing aids and a lot of these
patient's hearing aids aren't suitable and they need to move into the
implantable hearing solution space as well as making sure that the public are
aware of that the technology that is available to them beyond hearing aids
at this year's CI2018 conference in Antwerp Belgium I got to check out the nuclear 7
sound processor the world's smallest and lightest behind-the-ear cochlear implant
sound processor it's also a pioneer as it's the first and only made for iPhone
sound processor meaning cochlear works with Apple to have it baked into iOS when
you download a nuclear smart app before I go further I spoke to Keith about what
the device actually is
the cochlear implant system is made up of two basic parts, firstly we have the implant and then we have the sound processor which
is worn outside of the body the sound processors role is to provide power and
more importantly sound from the external environment to the implant the sound
processor is made up of three basic parts we have the sound processor itself
which picks up sound via dual microphone technology and compresses the sound and
using DSP it sends it via coil to the implant we also have a battery lithium
ion battery and also zinc air battery which powers the sound processor we
nuclear seven we are very excited to deliver also a USB charger to make
charging of the lithium ion battery much more convenient for our recipients USB
charges available in two different types forcely a white charger which allows a
recipient to charge two batteries simultaneously and also a single USB
charger the nuclear small app allows the user to be in control of their sound
processor in fact it gives people with hearing loss more control over the
hearing than someone with regular hearing
it comes with some amazing yet simple to use features called hearing tracker
find my processor and the ability to switch off background sound or hear from
the next room Adam from cochlear showed mini app which allows the user to stream
from various audio sources straight to the sound processor whether they use an
iPhone or an Android device the n7 is the first made for iPhone cochlear
implant which is a huge deal because there have been hearing aids that have
done that but never been a cochlear implant that's done that and so our
sound processor can stream directly from audio that is playing on your phone that
can stream directly to your sound processor so what we have here is the
smart app for the N 7 and we've got it running on both iOS and Android and so
the the new announcement today is that we are on Android so what the app
does is it replaces the need to have this the physical remote control that we
used to have which is like the size of a iPod Nano kind of thing that you'd have
to carry around with you and make all your adjustments now that we've got your
Bluetooth Low Energy on the sound processor we can talk directly to the
phone and you can come in and do all your simple changes like you can come in
and see the volume level that you're at you can make adjustments to the volume
you can change your audio sources so we have for instance a TV streamer and a
mini mic which are little accessories that we sell say to plug it into a TV
and then you get your sound stream directly from the TV to your sound
processor so you can come into the app in the app does your remote control for
all of that kind of stuff that you want to do at the top right we show you your
your processor status so your battery and your processor status you can tap
that and you come and see the status screen where we give you at a glance all
the information that you're interested in so your battery level the health of
the sound processor whether or not you know the coil is off or whether you need
to you know replace a particular anything like that and we also give you
a sound level meter so that you can see what the mics are actually picking up
around you other cool stuff that we have we have a find my sound processor feature
which is effectively like Find My iPhone but for your sound processor we can come
in and we can see on a map where your sound processor is and where was the
last seen for instance it was disconnected so you can go and find it
you know what's at school or it's at home or something like that we also
support a nearby mode which is where we're using the Bluetooth signal
strength to work out how far away the sound processor is sort of you're in the
room but you know it's behind the couch or you're not really sure where it is
you can walk around the room using this level that goes up and down and use that
to help try to find where your sound processor is also we have this
functionality called hearing tracker which is really cool it's kind of like
Fitbit but for your hearing so with with the CI it tracks how long you're in
a speech environment and what we do is the the app grabs that data from the
sound processor and could show for instance yesterday
you're in a speech environment for two hours and your clinician might say look
you need to set three hours as your minimum target every day and the app
gives you nice graphs historical data so you can come in and see how you're
tracking against your goals that your clinician has given you this year
cochlear also announced an exciting new feature that would give nuclear 7 users
superhuman like abilities the forward focus feature allows the user to change
focus to the sound in front of them imagine having a meeting or having
dinner with friends and family and you can focus the two built-in microphones
to focus on the person speaking to you and block out the background noise or
sound coming from behind you if he's too distracting or making it difficult I
have a client who is a psychologist and she sees clients on a
regular basis and the clients bring their children into the office and
when they do that the children are playing and playing with blocks and
talking and for my client to then focus on her session with her client she just
turns on forward focus and it literally blocks out
so it's important for the recipients to with themselves in the right to the
scenario where they've got their backs to the noise and it really cancels out
everything like that we have so many of our recipients who said to us I can't go
to the pub any more if I don't have my Ford Focus because it's just too noisy
if I can't enable forward focus while I'm you know having a good time and in a
social scenario with lots of the further understand how it's being
used I got an opportunity to speak with two people who wear a nuclear seven
sound processor Roger Smith cochlear's global product manager and Angela Irwin
our ability to create a processor that was made for iPhone was a huge advance
in technology but it was also a game-changer for our customers so we
have lots of customers who comment to us at hearing on the phone is very
challenging so we knew that making a processor made for iPhone is gonna
deliver on that challenge and Made For iPhone does two things for our customers
it means that they can stream audio directly from the phone to their
processor if you think about everything that people do with their phones these
days they're talking on the phone but also listening to music
watching videos using apps and games and all of that streams all of that uses
audio and in the past it was very hard for people with hearing loss be able to
access that tech access those features on their phone because it's hard to hear
on them on the speakerphone or headphones or earbuds are just not
practical so being able to stream sound directly from their phone to their
processor is a game changer and the quality of the sound is unparalleled
it's like the person's talking inside your head so our customers are saying to
us now how life-changing it is to be able to stream from
- their phone to their processor so they're able to take job interviews over the phone which they
were afraid to do in the past they're able to have conference calls with
colleagues in different countries where they it was hard to hear them with their
accents and now they can do that because they can stream that sound directly to
their processor hi I'm Angela I'm a nuclear cochlear implant recipient I'm
actually celebrating 21 years with my first cochlear implant this month and so
I wanted to show the original processor that I had which was this one it was
called a sprint body processor but you can see the size how big it is compared
to I now have the nucleus seven processors which are just so small it's
so light behind the ear but I used to have to have this clipped on and
run the cord up you know underneath your shirt and you would clip it to your
collar so not the point of saying I was you know in my early 20s when I was
first implanted so wasn't exactly exciting for a 20 year old to want to
wear this but I would have worn it every day for the rest of my life because of
the the hearing results that I got with the cochlear implant being able to use
the phone again being able to be in social situations again so it's just
incredible so now fast-forward 21 years on my mind
seventh upgrade with the nucleus seven which is just amazing I would have never
expected that when I was first implanted cochlear is just so dedicated to
improving hearing outcomes and the technology for recipients it's been really fun to have
this latest upgrade nucleus 7 and have it be compatible with my iPhone so I can
control both processors with my iPhone and enable forward focus which has just
been really incredible in noisy situations you know the technology was
already great in noisy situations but this is again another step up and
I think now as a deaf person I have the advantage in noisy environments over
the normal hearing people because the technology is just so amazing besides
the innovative forward focus feature Android and nucleus 24 implant series
compatibility I started thinking about the future and what's next for cochlear
speaking to various people and recipients as really open my eyes to the world of
hearing loss and cochlear dedication to innovate and change lives for the better
I can only imagine what's next such as the use of AI automatically switching on
and our forward focus or even real-time language translation if you want to find
out more check out the links in the description and Cochlear also on social
media if you have any questions thanks for watching make sure you hit that
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