“I’ve tried different brands of hearing aids, and they’re good, but they’re not that good,” says Martin in a Zoom interview. He met the team in SoHo, tested it on the road, and was thrilled when he tried it at his favorite restaurant with his wife and daughter, where de Jonge was sitting with a laptop several tables away. But the turning point for Martin was a cocktail party.
“I was here in my building, and I was upstairs at a party, and I had my old hearing aids on,” he says. “I’m talking to four people, and I realize I can’t understand any of them, and I go, wait, I have these new hearing aids. I went down, put them on, came back, and I could hear everyone.” Now he wears them all the time, and even joked about hearing aids Saturday night Live50th anniversary special. “I don’t really think about it the way I used to,” he says. “I used to be afraid to go to a restaurant, and not anymore.” His friend Balban is equally amazed after joining the beta testing. “This is a significant improvement over the absurdly expensive equipment I was using,” says Balaban.
The other mackers are not public, but de Jong assured me they are mostly names called out in boldface type. Since there are only a few dozen beta units, that means some powerful people have been put on the waiting list. Balaban’s wife, Lynn Grossman, tells of attending a Labor Day dinner with more than 100 people, usually of a certain age, in a private room of a restaurant, thinking that her husband and another man – a well-known CEO in the fashion world – were the only ones who could hear because of Fortel. “After that, I think Bob got 12 or 14 emails saying, ‘How do I get these hearing aids?'”
Now that the product has launched, Fortel will sell the hearing aids in a single clinic on Park Avenue in Manhattan. It’s decorated like a posh lounge, with devices displayed in a sleek presentation that’s straight out of the Apple retail playbook. On the wall hangs a silicon wafer with the circuitry of custom chips. In the initial phase, his staff of four audiologists will serve only a couple of dozen clients a week, to ensure that everything runs smoothly. In any case, supply will remain limited while production is ramped up.
That’s great for Fortel, but it seems like DeJonge’s initial impulse to bring everyone’s grandparents to the land of hearings is in danger of being limited to the one percent that doesn’t really qualify him for the Salk Medal. When I ask de Jong how his invention might change the lives of the general public, his answers, whether due to secrecy over future plans or simply not having a good answer, seem airy. In its defense, Fortel has resisted the temptation to inflate the traditional price tag of premium hearing aids – $6,800 is actually a bit less than some other clinically prescribed hearing aids. (Like other high-end hearing aids, the price is part of a package that includes fitting and support from professional audiologists.) Still, even that defensive price tag limits adoption; It is a sad fact that some Medicare and many health insurance plans do not cover hearing aids, a policy that leaves millions of people vulnerable to exclusion from communication, isolation from loved ones, and dementia.
It’s unclear whether Fortel technology could find its way into the less expensive over-the-counter hearing aids available today, made possible through a Biden-era change in regulation. These include Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 devices and entries from other consumer electronics brands, which are generally known for helping people with hearing loss, but not as many high-end devices that are paired with professional support. The Fortel proposal requires careful testing and tuning, which continues for some time as wearers get used to the devices. In any case, that white-glove approach will derail Fortel’s efforts over the next year and beyond. Expansion will begin by opening clinics in select cities and only then will Fortel consider scaling up to allow others to sell the technology.
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