Hearing Aid apps: are they safe, practical and beneficial for children and teens in challenging situations?

Purpose: An adult version of an app giving users the control over the level of the volume, microphone directionality and noise reduction was adapted for children. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of changes made to microphone directionality and noise reduction in the myPhonak Junior (the app) on Speech intelligibility in challenging listening environments in children and teens.

Methods: The randomized, non-blinded interventional study with a single group of subjects involved two study visits with a home trial in-between. In the final study session speech assessment in noise was conducted in three different, randomly assigned conditions: default mode (Autosense Sky OS), preffered (self-adjusted) and the extreme condition. Questionnaire based assessment was conducted to assess the subjective benefit of using the app in different daily situations.

Results: The best scores (speech results in noise) were achieved with the preferred setting and the default Autosense Sky OS setting was significantly better than the extreme setting. The self-reported benefit through the questionnaire indicates significantly better result when adjusting the hearing aids through the app.

Conclusion: The app is an easy-to-use way of controlling the level of noise reduction and the beam forming for children 11 years and older. It has the potential to help customizing the hearing aids beyond the default setting and helping to improve speech understanding in noise.