Development of Hearing Technology with Personalized Safe Listening Features

Abstract

Noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a growing public health concern in the US and globally due to the emergence of lifestyle preferences and environmental exposures to sound levels exceeding safe listening limits for extended periods of time. Issuance of the ITU guidelines for safe listening devices/systems (ITU-T H.870) leading to the 2019 WHO-ITU standard, along with existing US federal and military standards, provide a framework for developing an accessible tool for promoting safe listening. Our proposed Hearing Health app, is being developed for an aggregated assessment of a user's daily sound exposure, through the audio system and the environment (occupation and beyond) by integrating WHO-ITU and US safe listening standards, providing real-time alerts, user-centric recommendations and education that can be integrated into user lifestyles, representing a wide demographic including young adult, adult, civilian and military populations. The overall goal of the app will be to increase NIHL awareness and facilitate improvement of user's listening behaviors.