Quadio Devices, a Pune based startup, has introduced an app which combines the components already present on with your smartphone such as the microphone, the processor and headset to emulate what they claim is a fully functional hearing mechanism. The app is designed to use the results from a simple, interactive hearing test to calibrate and customise the listening experience of a hearing impaired user.
The company estimates that about 120 million people in India have hearing problems and less than 1 percent actually use any kind of hearing solution. That’s a pretty large potential market.
The company plans to foray into the rural arena by utilising what they call Virtual Clinics to assess the hearing aid requirements of potential patients. Telemedicine is in a relatively nascent stage, in India however Quadio uses the internet to connect a patient, who might be in any corner of the world, to a pool of highly trained audiologists. Their aim is to dispense medical advice remotely without the need for trained audiologists to be physically present at the point of contact. The company plans to expand the number of those points of contacts greatly over the coming year. They currently have 30 such centers while their new Virtual Clinics are to have iPads and custom bone conducting headphones to help test patients hearing levels.
As of now, the app is as good as a mid level physical hearing aid but the developers plan on making the app as good as a high-end hearing device, which costs about a lakh or more in the market. The startup aims to increase the penetration of hearing solutions by increasing affordability and reach of the technology.
“The flexibility of controls offered by a smartphone app is much more than that offered by conventional hearing aids and, along with the affordability of smartphones, the reach of the app store, and the inbuilt test, this gets us closer to achieving our objective,” said Anurag Sharma, Co-Founder, and CTO.
