Remembering how warmly Whisper was received by the community, well… here’s the latest disruptor on the block. Available now if you live in New York. Heavily leveraging on-board . 58% better at this 97.3% better at that. Previously known as Chromatic Hearing. There’s a wired article that’s behind a paywall. Go at it!
Discover Fortell's clinically proven AI hearing aids. Superior speech clarity in noisy environments, backed by science. Now in NYC. Request your appointment.
We need more data and user reports. Aids can be better in specific tests designed to show whatever, but struggle in real world use. A small test subject pool is of limited use. The fact that it was socialized as a hot commodity adds to the subjectivity challenge. NYC is particular environment which does not match what all users need. The investors want to recover their investment and media pieces serve a purpose.
The article assumes it was compared to Sphere. Plenty do not find Sphere materially better than non-Sphere Phonak. Even if Fortell is better somehow, that may be helpful to some and not others. Did they test it with a more , probably not. Then some who like the reduced processing of Oticon/Widex will not like this. The article says nothing about how it might work without the /. They also seem to have targeted certain types of hearing loss, or at least it appears that way. Reality will hit when long-time aid users with all types of loss have to decide whether to return them if they do not feel there is $6,800 of value.
Hopefully they succeed as competition and more US players is good. The Europeans better get to work.
Who has the fitting software (or is it cloud based like Allure and therefore uninteresting to some here) and when can the site get a pair for independent testing.
I’m willing to believe that there is plenty of room for improvement for today’s hearing aids. After all, anything that’s out there right now is essentially ‘first generation AI’.
If there is a new disruptor, I’m all for it!
If nothing else, hopefully it will spurn the established players to up their game. Maybe some of the big 5 might decide that it could be worth it to join forces to develop better AI models together.
At the end of the day though, market share in the hearing aid market is largely determined by how many clinics a manufacturer operates or is affiliated with. That’s a steep hill to climb for any new player in this market.
Hi everyone, I’m Matt, CEO at Fortell. I just want to thank you for your curiosity in our work. If anyone in the NYC area would be interested in visiting for a demo of our product, I’d be honored to host you myself. Drop your email here and I’ll reach out to handle logistics. Hope you’ll forgive the elitist slant of the Wired article. It doesn’t reflect our values (though it’s true we had some high profile beta testers). We are a small team, obsessed with helping people hear better and we are invested in building long term trust with this community. Thanks again.
Matt - happy holidays, hope you had a nice Christmas. I’d be interested in giving your a trial run, please reach out harryz.alias@outlook.com. I am in Brooklyn and can easily come by. I am particularly interested in the finer details of your technical approach, how your models might be different that companies like Audatic, and how you are handling latency & processing time with the chip. Curious of course to see performance and hear more about who your target user is given the various types of hearing loss has exist. I’m a sophisticated HA user and have tried practically all major models at one time or another. I have been following you since the chromatic days as I heard about you through my investor network.
A more recent article. Sounds kind of interesting to me now. Btw, if you want to feel inadequate, look up the the resume of one of the founders: Igor Lovchinsky.
Guys be careful with the marketing department blurb, ya know, like every brand has the “solution” truly a miracle..if it actually works outside of the lab, Sonova will be out of business tomorrow.. maybe
We tested the prototypes at HearAdvisor, they are legit. Whether they are better than sphere by a significant margin, well, that’s something we need to determine by getting our hands on the production units.
While there is a lot of marketing hype going on, I’m absolutely willing to believe that a newcomer can beat the established players when it comes to performance.
Without any doubt, the big five have built up a lot of infrastructure, domain knowledge and trust when it comes to traditional HA functionality.
But AI in hearing aids is new for every vendor, and potentially disruptive.
I read it, but it’s that old saying, everyone is different in how we perceive things, not everyone is gonna get the same results as the lab, real world experience for some reason always seems “different” cheers
We did private lab work for them, so nothing published yet. @MattHdeJonge is going to send us some of their production-run models so stay tuned for the public data.
I do believe that Fortell may be the new disrupter. I had patient come in with a pair and honestly, they were amazing. I ran real ear measurements and verified directionality. They were spot on. Pt reports being delighted with his new hearing aids. He has been my patient for many years and has had several hearing aids. He had to get new devices in NY because he was suck there for a year. He was fitted and was thrilled. I am very opened minded; my only goal is to get the hearing-impaired back to living their best life.
I ran real ear measurements and verified directionality. They were spot on.
You verified them only or had also a possibility to tuning? How manny channels/handles they have?
Which acoustic coupling patient had, because there is probably some ear canal blocking necessary? If earmold, what diameter of vent?
And I wonder which hearing aids he had previously.
Auckland, New Zealand
Poland