On August 16th ReSound announced the launch of their latest hearing aid platform which they are calling Omnia. I have always thought that drunk monkeys get to choose the names of hearing aids, I could be wrong. Anyway, Omnia hearing aids will be available in the US and Canada from the 25th of August and the global rollout will follow from there. As is their wont lately, ReSound is initially launching a limited selection of Receiver In Canal devices on the platform. Here is what we know.
Three Styles of RICs
The platform will be available in three RIC styles, a rechargeable RIC, a RIC 61 with a traditional size 312 battery, and a RIC 62 with a traditional size 13 battery. The devices, as you can see from the picture above, are shaped just like the One. ReSound are making some pretty strong claims such as "With ReSound OMNIA™ your patients can hear their best in noise with an incredible 150% improvement in speech understanding*1. Powered by the industry’s only Organic Hearing™."
150% is a big number, the supporting study evidence shows that Omnia will provide 4.3dB SNR (Signal To Noise Ratio) improvement to speech understanding compared to legacy products. 4.3dB is a much smaller number, however, when dealing with SNR, it's a significant improvement on previous products. The video below gives a decent rundown of the system.
Organic Hearing made me laugh quite a lot, but it means that they sound natural, feel natural and connect you to your world naturally. There I was with visions of free-roaming hearing aids living an unfettered life frolicking across the landscape. Anyway, I digress, they also announced a pretty cool feature that will be available on the App that they call Check My Fit. Funnily enough, it will allow you to check the fit of your hearing aids.
This is a cool feature because many new users are never sure if they have their hearing aids in their ears correctly. Even worse, if they haven't inserted the hearing aids correctly, well then they aren't getting the full benefit intended. Check My Fit will hopefully go some way towards solving the uncertainty and ensuring that users are receiving the full benefit of their hearing devices. My advice to you is to push the receivers in as far as they will go, they are designed not to go too deep. The wire coming from behind your ear down to your ear should be hugging your face.
Another thing that the press release mentioned was natural own voice perception. They didn't give much information so it will be interesting what they were talking about. Another element mentioned was 360 degree sound environment mapping. They say "This enables your patients to automatically tune into what they want to listen to and not have the hearing aids choose for them". It makes me wonder about their new directionality strategy and whether we are looking at a system akin to the Opn concept from Oticon.
Anyway, as I hear more, I will do another more in-depth article on features and what you can expect. Please like us on Facebook by clicking the button below to keep up with our latest utterances. Alternatively, if you don't like Facebook, sign up for the newsletter below. It is important to remember; a hearing aid isn't correctly fitted unless they do Real Ear Measurement.
