Olivia Austin, Audiologist at Integrate Hearing discusses the improvements in hearing aid technology and how some of the new features available are helping to change the attitude towards wearing hearing aids.

I think at the moment because of technology, hearing aids are vastly different to what people imagine them to be. I still get a lot of people coming in to see me and saying ‘Oh, you know, I’ve put it off because I thought it was going to be some huge, huge thing behind my ear.” And they are really, really pleasantly surprised with the new technology. Within the hearing industry we are trying to raise awareness of the fact that hearing aids have changed. The styles are much more discreet; often they are invisible a lot of the time.

And the technology is amazing. You can now get hearing aids that stream directly to your phone so you can listen to things like music, things like YouTube, and you can go on your Ipad or tablet and your laptop. And it means that things are a lot more accessible, because whereas you may have had to before take your hearing aids out and then put in your headphones, you can just do it all in one got.

So now I think we are getting over that and they are becoming something that people want to go for, because they are high tech. There are really high-tech bits of kit and its like “yeah my hearing aids do this.” Yeah, I think it is vastly changing.