Disposable Hearing Aid Battery Management: Survey Assessment of Providers and Qualitative Interviews of Patients

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study was to better understand the behaviors that hearing aid users engage in to manage batteries. Method Two arms of research, a survey of audiologists ( n = 110) and qualitative interviews with adult hearing aid users ( n = 13), were conducted. Surveys were distributed and collected both via paper and online methods. Descriptive analyses of survey results were conducted to report on common threads. Qualitative interviews were conducted with video recording for transcription purposes. These transcripts were then coded thematically to identify shared themes across participants. Results Results of this study highlight the variability in behavior between provider-recommended strategies (preemptive battery management) and the reactive/delay strategies that are implemented by users. Patient reports indicate several challenges related to changing their batteries including limited information on hearing aid batteries, physical/sensory challenges to the act, and the social impact of having to change hearing aid batteries. Concurrently, patients express a wide range of strategies to address other challenges including engaging in cost-conscious behaviors when managing batteries (both purchasing and deciding to replace) and maintaining a collection of easily accessible batteries for use. Conclusions Hearing aid batteries are a topic that reflect social and economic factors in a patient's life. While providers may report they cover these topics sufficiently, challenges related to batteries may need specific elucidation by the clinician to ensure adherence to recommendations and functioning devices.

A Novel Piezoelectric Energy Harvester for Earcanal Dynamic Motion Exploitation Using a Bistable Resonator Cycled by Coupled Hydraulic Valves Made of Collapsed Flexible Tubes

“…The energy consumption of the best integrated devices in the literature reaches up to 17 J for a 10 h period of daily use [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Woodruff et al underlined that patients using hearing aids sometimes struggle to change and select disposable batteries for their devices [ 4 ]. Another statistical study recently revealed that the rechargeable batteries have the most positive impact on customer’s listening experience [ 5 ].…”

Attitudes towards hearing difficulties, health-seeking behaviour, and hearing aid use among older adults in Thailand

“…Although hearing services are included in universal health coverage, hearing devices require maintenance. Changing batteries could impose both mechanical and financial challenges ( 27 ). Previous studies also highlighted handling problems and volume control ( 19 ).…”

Improved Particle Swarm Optimization-Extreme Learning Machine Modeling Strategies for the Accurate Lithium-ion Battery State of Health Estimation and High-adaptability Remaining Useful Life Prediction

“…27 Alternatively, a probabilistic monotonic echo state network algorithm is used to follow the nonlinear battery aging process on the basis of the time interval associated with the sequence of voltage declines during battery capacity and discharge. 28 Benefits of this approach are that only a portion of the battery charge/discharge test is required for SOH estimation; 29 as well as being comparatively simple and accessible to implement, 30 although the extraction of feature maps requires consideration of various elements and extensive workload. 31 Data-driven based approaches take battery test data as the initial sample, withdraw the evolution law of battery performance during battery degradation by some mechanisms, and then utilize this regularity for SOH estimation.…”