Sound World Solutions

History

Sound World Solutions was established in 2007 by Dr. Stavros Basseas, an engineer and hearing aid technologist, and David Green, a specialist in public health projects for developing markets, to develop low-cost hearing assistance devices. These devices can be adjusted using a tablet or laptop computer program or a smartphone application, instead of conventional clinical instruments, such as an audiometer, Hi-Pro box and anechoic chamber. As a result, these devices – classified as personal sound amplifiers in the U.S. – can be used as hearing aids in developing markets where such instrumentation does not commonly exist. This design platform was intended to address the needs of the approximately 1 billion people that The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates have some degree of hearing loss, including 328 million who experience disabling hearing loss. Of this number, the vast majority of people who get hearing aids live in the U.S. and Europe, leaving the developing world grossly underserved.

The WHO concludes that limited access to hearing assistance can cause isolation among people with hearing loss, while denying children with hearing loss access to schooling. In addition, unemployment is higher among adults with hearing loss while those who are employed are in lower-paid occupations compared with the general workforce. In the U.S., the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Diseases estimates, hearing aids are used by only about 20 percent of the 36 million Americans who could benefit from one. While two-thirds of this number are under the age of 65, most do not use hearing aids because they are too expensive or difficult to operate or an unwelcome sign of advancing age. According to Frank Lin, a professor of public health and an ear surgeon at Johns Hopkins University, one problem with the current market for hearing aids is that the supply is dominated by a handful of manufacturers, each using a proprietary technology. This costly approach yields a high-profit, low-volume market strategy. By contrast, Sound World Solutions’ design platform relies on inexpensive off-the-shelf Bluetooth technology, yielding a hearing device that costs less than a tenth the price of a conventional hearing aid. Rather than disguise its hearing device as a hearing aid, Sound World Solutions designed it to look and function as a Bluetooth device, which is common among people without hearing loss. By developing a customizable diagnostic system based on ubiquitous and low-cost cellular telephone technology, the device serves individuals who are not addressed by the conventional hearing aid industry in developed nations, as well as in the developing world, where it would take many years to develop a network to dispense conventional hearing aids. This business model is based on one created by Green, who worked to establish Aurolab, an Indian company that manufactures intraocular lenses for the treatment of cataracts. By emphasizing volume, Aurolab drove down the price of lenses from several hundred dollars to about $2 each, enabling millions of people to affordably regain their sight.