A Pune-based company specialising in hearing care solutions, has launched India’s first app that turns a mobile phone into a hearing aid for those with moderate to severe hearing loss. Harnessing the smart phone’s inherent computing power, a team at Quadio Devices has created an Android and iOS app with special algorithms that maximises the listening experience, lets users control and customise sound quality — and provides all the features of a conventional hearing aid.
The app lets the user perform a hearing test, adjust the sound for maximum comfort, reduce environmental noise and then use the earphone of the phone much as one uses a hearing aid. Quadio was co-founded in 2009 by two IIT graduates, Paresh Patel and Anurag Sharma to develop hearing solutions. Sharma explained that sustained exposure to high decibel sound — whether from traffic or from hearing music at high volume, or even from constant use of cell phone ear pieces outdoors — results in many suffering some degree of hearing loss. They may not all want to go in for a hearing aid — and the phone app will come as a boon to such sufferers. “We set out to create a hearing solution that empowered people to hear what they wanted, how they wanted and wherever they wanted. The flexibility of controls offered by a smartphone app is much more than that offered by conventional hearing aids,” says Sharma. The app works with all iPhones from 4s to 6s plus and with most Android phones of version 5 and later.
