[adinisom]

Not sure but can mention some challenges:

- The power budget of a traditional HA is ~1mW and operate on ~1V. Existing vendors use custom silicon with sub-threshold designs to hit this. I see this as one of their largest moats. Lipo rechargeable wearables work around this problem.

- Customers for your product want their hearing back, and that's not something HAs realistically provide. So selling them is pretty weird as your customer isn't going to be completely satisfied and newer HAs won't improve much along this dimension. On the other hand you can sell "comfort" via noise reduction, bluetooth streaming, and whatever technology buzzwords you can fit on a brochure.

- But can my fancier DSP algorithms improve speech understanding in noise? Maybe, but you've got a 10ms latency budget in which to do so. Hard to compete with the human brain which can cheat and backdate perceptions into the past.

- FM systems, on the other hand, can dramatically improve speech understanding by eliminating noise and echoes. Right now it's only a fit for situations where you can mic the speaker. Traditional HA companies have a hand in making these.

[NBJack]

Not to mention that there's a wide range of hearing issues that you will have to decided on tackling. There are several, inexpensive over-the-counter aids that can help with moderate loss, but if you have clinically profound hearing loss, there's no avoiding more expensive gear.

Let's not forget the rigor it must stand up to (water, wax, sweat, heat, temp differentials, dead skin buildup, etc.).