Breaking the Sound Barrier: Using Sensors to Help Australians Hear Better
Dr Miles and her team at Macquarie University Hearing, global hub of hearing and hearing-related research, education and engagement.
A staggering one in four Australians will suffer from hearing loss by 2050, and this is mirrored across the globe: one in three people over the age of 80 are deaf or hard-of-hearing. A significant challenge that comes with having a hearing loss is simply difficulty communicating, and this often severely impacts people’s social participation.
When social interactions are compromised, we start to see people withdraw from society – their quality of life decreases and a myriad of health risks surge. Hearing devices currently play a critical role in restoring communication pathways —in fact they are the only intervention for most forms of acquired hearing loss— but their performance often depends on their ability to adapt to the dynamics of the environment. Background noise still poses a significant challenge for hearing devices, and it’s the spaces such as cafes and restaurants where people come to connect that are often the noisiest, and most difficult to communicate in.
Our team comprises of researchers from ECHO Lab at Macquarie University Hearing and The Age Lab at the MARCS Institute at Western Sydney University, along with global-leading industry partners Cochlear and Google Research (Australia). Together, we plan to tackle this issue using a multi-sensor approach. If we can determine those biomarkers that best detect when someone is having a difficult time communicating, we can start to think about what we can do with this information to ease communication. For example, we might be able to better adjust or tailor algorithms in hearing devices to an individual’s needs and the specific communication scenario in which they find themselves.
We’re very grateful to have the support of the NSSN, having been successful in this year’s NSSN Grand Challenge Fund, and plan to use the next 12-months ravenously collecting a host of communication data from individuals across the lifespan. My collaborator Professor Jeesun Kim from the Age Lab at MARCS is always quick to highlight the importance of understanding how communication dynamics and biomarker responses change as people age, as this understanding can provide valuable insights into how speech communication in challenging conditions is managed across different age groups.
There is a clear and critical need for discovery and innovation in this space. The Department of Health’s Roadmap for Hearing Health (2019) has helped drive our understanding of the relationship between Australia’s ageing population and the increased incidence of hearing loss, and how this places extra demand on the healthcare system.
Societal participation requires the ability to communicate effectively and efficiently, and hearing loss associated with ageing, cognitive decline and frailty, represents a clear, yet potentially modifiable, barrier to healthy older age. Using a multi-sensor approach, our team’s united vision is to enable individuals with hearing loss to maintain healthy social interactions for longer, live independently, and have a greater quality of life.
Dr Miles is a fellow of Macquarie University. Her research interests include understanding the mismatch between laboratory and clinical hearing assessments and real-world communication, developing assessments that better reflect real-world listening challenges, and understanding human behaviour when communication is compromised and breaks down.
Dr Miles is leading a successful team from 2023’s NSSN Grand Challenge Fund. She is partnering with Western Sydney University and industry partners Cochlear and Google.
