Last year the hottest innovation driving the fastest-growing segment of the hearing-aid market was the “thin-tube, open-fit” design for behind-the ear (BTE) aids. This year, will the hottest new products be RITE? Oticon will show its new Delta “Receiver-in-the-Ear” hearing aids featuring the RITE architecture at the American Academy of Audiology annual conference in Minneapolis this week. Like the thin-tube designs, the new RITE aids are comfortable and practically invisible, but by placing the speaker deep within the ear next to the eardrum, they also have the acoustical advantage completely-in-the-canal (CIC) aids. I’ll be at the AAA conference and will come home with a better understanding of just how exciting this new design may be.
The Oticon Delta RITE aids feature a very small unit with the microphone and amplifier hidden snugly behind the ear and an ultra-thin copper wire snaking directly into the ear canal. At the end of the wire is an open-fitDelta RITE Technology earmold with an integrated speaker. Because the amplifier and microphone are behind the ear, there is less of an opportunity for feedback than with CIC designs, and the open earmold has all the comfort of open-fit designs. Putting the speaker inside the ear and the rest of the electronics behind the ear isn’t a new idea, but it’s chock full of technical challenges — in addition to making the speaker smaller than ever, it also has to be rugged enough to content with wax buildup and pools of sweat. If these and other technical limitations can truly be overcome, the potential advantages are exciting. Oticon is touting its Delta aids as a breakthrough for the under-60 generation that should be more than ready for hearing aids but has continued to resist them. After I get a look at the new aids in Minneapolis, I’ll tell you more.