[ChristinaM]

The hard part about disrupting the hearing aid industry is that most of what people are paying for is service. First there are a lot of reasons that people could have hearing loss where a hearing aid isn't the right choice, like a tumor. Then they need to figure out how to get the darned things in and configured the way they want. Then they need to figure out that they don't like it when they're on then phone, then you tweak the programming. Then they call because they can't figure out how to replace the battery, then they hate it because they can hear the fridge running again, then they finally go out and find out it doesn't work in noisy places, so you tweak it again, and so on. Plus hearing aid programming isn't prescriptive, like determining a vision prescription. People have different expectations and experiences of hearing as well as different audio environments in their lives. Automating testing or programming is a almost a wicked problem and then you'll get to face the American Association of Audiologist. I'd love to see it happen but I spent a year helping a company with deep pockets try and it's a lot less simple than it seems. Driving down manufacturing costs isn't enough to truly disrupt that industry.