As for the form factor, the Orka One is very reminiscent of AirPods, but they are hearing aids!
Ever since Apple introduced the original AirPods in 2016, the Cupertino-based company has intentionally emphasized that its popular earbuds are listening devices. Essentially a computer for your ears. With new software features like Live Listen and Conversation Boost coming, Apple has been even more discreet in sending the message that his AirPods are nameless. No Designed to replace medical grade hearing aids. For people who need better hearing, there are many hearing aids for iPhone that are tightly integrated with iOS. AirPods aren’t designed to radically improve your hearing ability.
One of the first things they clearly emphasize in their years of AirPods briefings with Apple is that AirPods are for casual listening to music and podcasts.Again, they No Considered as a hearing aid replacement, these are fancy earbuds.
Orka One from health tech company Orka absolutely hearing aid.
“[We’ve] Orka co-founder and CEO Ben Sun said in a videoconference interview last month, “When we started this new venture, she [co-founder Xinke Lu] I had a very hard time figuring out what the product was [hearing aids] You should do something like this: [it can] It can be something more user-friendly and user-focused as well as improving people’s hearing. It’s definitely part of our DNA. “
Orka’s first inspiration came around Christmas time 2017, when Sun was visiting relatives in China. He realized that his grandmother had hearing problems and decided to buy hearing aids. Expensive hearing aids cost him over $1000 and his grandmother stopped using hearing aids after a month of him. At the time, Sun said he was working at Apple, where he helped make products like keyboards and trackpads for the MacBook and his Siri Remote for the Apple TV. He envisioned hearing aids that loosely resembled his AirPods, with a top-notch user experience. Her one of the comments from his grandmother was that despite using hearing aids, she still had trouble keeping up with people when conversing in noisy environments. It was a lesson for Sun.
Orka One has been nominated for an Innovation Award in the Health & Wellness category at CES 2021. The device was hailed as “the world’s first hearing aid with its own hearing aid”. [patent-pending] AI DeNoise technology, running server-level neural networks on earbud-level CPUs, automatically identifies and filters noise to improve speech understanding in real time. “
Hearing health concerns aren’t limited to Sun and his grandmother. Another of his co-founders of Orka is his Xinke Lu. He developed hearing loss at an early age and now wears a cochlear implant. Sun explained that it was from her own lived experience that Lu was drawn to his vision of improving her hearing aids. Along with other co-founders, her Chauncey Lu and her Linkai Li, the quartet set out to rethink hearing aids, thus removing much of the stigma associated with poor hearing.
At the heart of Orka One is artificial intelligence and machine learning. Sun and the team leveraged the founder’s experience in various technologies to build a product more or less like AirPods, but pushing the AI component further than what Apple is doing with its earbuds. Orka One is controlled via a smartphone app available for iOS and Android and works similarly to the iOS Watch app. Both companion apps act as a kind of mothership to their respective devices. Okra One receives software updates over the air and applied through the app. There’s also a compact, AirPods-esque charging case for the Orka One when the battery runs low.
Technically speaking, the most exciting part is Orka One’s AI component. Orka uses artificial intelligence and machine learning not just for technical purposes, but in innovative ways. According to Sun, one of the main reasons for relying on AI is to filter out ambient noise to make speech more intelligible. This is pretty much in line with what Apple has done with Live Listen in recent years. Plus, it’s exactly the kind of solution her Sun grandma desperately wanted.
“AI can be very helpful in filtering human speech in real time,” Sun says of the benefits Orka One has gained from using AI and ML technologies in this way. “The really tricky part is [figuring out] How can you do that in real time on a tiny device? It’s tiny, tiny form factor, with a tiny battery and a tiny processing chip.What should I do [implement AI processes] Real time is tricky. “
In the same way that Apple communicated the core mission of AirPods, Sun has clearly set its expectations for the Orka One. Meanwhile, Apple is developing more consumer earbuds for passive consumer purposes, he said. Supson For the hearing health component, Orka sells authentic medical devices.
“In my opinion [Apple’s] The main customer they are looking for is the mainstream market, targeting people with no hearing loss or very mild hearing loss,” said Sun. “For us, we [a] 100% health company; we only work on medical devices for now. We focus on providing medical devices that help people with mild to moderate hearing loss hear better. “
Practically speaking, access to Orka One begins, of course, by visiting the product’s website. Sun and his team have thought deeply about “not just innovating hearing aids themselves.” They take a very Apple-like approach to controlling the entire stack, from the product design itself, to his website, customer service, and more. One of Sun’s areas of particular focus is the economy. Orka’s team is keenly aware of not only the exorbitant cost of traditional hearing aids, but also the costs associated with running a traditional hearing clinic. Manufacturers and health maintenance organizations will have to recoup their spending in some way. Charging customers more money is certainly one way to do that. Orka, by contrast, tries to keep prices as low as possible by selling directly to customers, without middlemen. In addition to shipping an Orka One apparently to someone’s doorstep, the company offers services such as virtual “unpacking” sessions with audiologists, allowing them to run an audiogram remotely, or use the product I can teach you how. As far as it is perfectly plausible that a person in need of hearing aids finds it cumbersome to go to a local clinic, the remote nature of such facilities makes hearing aids more accessible beyond the hearing aspect. There are also post-purchase consultations for customers as a way to check in and establish a sort of “paper trail” on progress. “For the first two months [of use] VERY IMPORTANT — CHECK THAT [people] You have worn your hearing aid long enough to be comfortable using it [it] So we can get the most out of our devices,” said Sun. “That way we can lower the overall cost.”
As for pricing, Sun said the company estimates the Orka One’s final price will be around $1200 to $1300 in the US. This number represents “what we believe to be a much more affordable price range for users.”
Looking to the future, Sun’s main goal is simple. keep pushing forward.
Cool and nerdy, but easy to get into the weeds about all the intricate details how Orka One features. As Steve Jobs used to say, technology alone is not enough. Sun and his team are in business, but at their core is the altruistic idea of genuinely helping people hear better. They want their device to end up being a wearable computer, “once you put it on and forget it,” he said. The team is committed to leading the healthcare industry towards a more modern take on cutting-edge technology like Orca hearing aids. They want to make an impact on the world by making hearing aids accessible and familiar to everyone.
“We want to be very focused on this, we want our hearing aids to be able to move the healthcare industry forward,” said Sun. “I want to change the conversation about this product category [hearing aids]Once the product is very functional, we can really nail down what we’re trying to do. I want hearing aid [instead of being] Something that people are forced to have because they need it.Want to make sure [hearing aids] Something people are happy to have or like… [we want to] Make them desirable to people.they might be so cool [fashion] statement. “
