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Mimi Hearing Technologies Transforms Not Only Our Ability To Listen To Music But Our Ability To Hear

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TEDxPoznan, 2017

When you look at a masterful work of art, you want to be able to see the details in the craftsmanship. But if your vision is impaired, you will miss out on the important details that make that piece of art so special. During a TEDxPoznan talk, Mimi Hearing Technologies CEO Philipp Skribanowitz elaborates on this idea.

Well, what is the equivalent in sound? Of course, it is music. If we look at the music industry, the music industry has put in a lot of effort to improve sound quality.” For example, high-fidelity audio... The artist practices, has very expensive instruments, goes to a great recording studio, the song is mastered and put on a lossless file format. The fan then buys very expensive speakers or headphones to really hear all the details in the music that the artist puts in there, in order for the fan to enjoy the music. But if the hearing ability in the last step is not considered, there is something missing.

Are You Hearing Less Without Knowing It?

Hearing has several dimensions. The physical dimensions of amplitude and frequency correspond to the psychological dimensions of loudness and pitch. Frequencies move from low to high like the keys on a piano. Speech happens at a lower frequency. Traditionally, people only realize the extent of their hearing loss when they start to have trouble following day-to-day conversations. It is the higher frequencies that we tend to lose first. A violin, for example, can reach a frequency much higher than human speech. As a result, our ability to hear all of the nuances in music is impacted much earlier than that of speech. This implies that although we invest in high-resolution audio or purchase tickets to the opera or our favorite orchestra, by not taking into consideration our own personal hearing ability, we are missing out on those finer musical details that the artist worked so hard for us to hear.

Who Is Mimi?

Globally, one out of 40 people suffer from untreated hearing loss. One-third of those people are under the age of 35. In order to address this problem, a group of forward thinkers from Berlin founded a company called Mimi Hearing Technologies. Mimi has built an algorithm that models the healthy human ear. Their hearing test app allows you to take a test to identify the extent to which you are not hearing at a 100%. Mimi then is able to compensate for the difference, bringing your own personal hearing ability back up to 100%. This is called sound personalization. Their software is already integrated into audio products and can sync up with platforms like Soundcloud, iTunes and Spotify.  CEO Philipp Skribanowitz puts an emphasis on the richness and the dimensionality that sound brings to your day to day life. Mimi's app has over 1.5 million downloads. Approximately, 900,000 of those downloads represent users taking a hearing test. To date, the company has won four major accolades including the Sonar+D Start Up Award 2017 and the Midem Lab Award in 2016.

Breaking The Stigma

During the inception of Mimi, Skribanowitz identified that the social stigma associated with hearing loss impacted peoples willingness to identify the problem. This reality struck a personal cord with him since his father had been putting off making an appointment to check the status of his hearing, for years. While the impairment grew increasingly apparent. This was just one of a major series of events that led Skribanowitz and his co-founders to decide to break the stigma through accessibility. The result was a hearing test app available via the app store.

Hearing Test App

Mimi's hearing test app works similar to that of a traditional audiology appointment. At the beginning of the test, the app will play a variety of tones across different frequencies. As soon as you hear the tone, you lift your finger from the button. The test was calibrated to be used with Apple's hardware, including any version of the iPhone and their standard white earphones. In the results provided, you are able to see your hearing ability per ear across different frequencies. The app encourages users throughout the experience to consult a doctor in case they experience hearing difficulties, as such apps should not be considered a replacement for routine doctors visits. 

Mimi Hearing Technologies

What To Do With Hearing Health Data

The visualization shown above illustrates the hearing capabilities of each country around the world. This data was collected by Mimi from over one million hearing tests conducted worldwide. They used the data to calculate the deviations in decibels (dB) from the average hearing in each age group in different cities and countries. The U.S. has a solid hearing average of -0.14 dB, falling just short of Canada whose average sits at +2.65 dB.

Mimi's Partnerships And Their Global Impact

Mimi’s partnerships are not only expanding the potential of their technology but are planting the seeds to have a meaningful and positive impact on a global scale. In partnership with German public health insurance company Barmer, Mimi launched the largest digital prevention campaign in Germany to date. Within ten months, the team conducted over 125,000 hearing tests. During the campaign, a two-part study was conducted with over 650 people. What they learned is that the more people are aware of their current state of hearing, the more preventative measures they will take. Mimi’s hearing test app allows people to stay on top of their hearing by making it possible to take tests more frequently. Additionally, Mimi has also partnered with headphone company Beyerdynamic. Together, Beyerdynamic and Mimi have launched the Aventho Wireless Bluetooth headphone, winning among others the CES innovation award. Furthermore, the research and development project “Ears” was launched together with German hearable manufacturer Bragi, which focuses on personalized sound amplification across the home, office, job site, and even outdoor sports environments.

Mimi is not only partnering up with companies in the lifestyle segment. There is a great interest in the biotech- and pharma world for an intuitively built hearing test app that is accessible to virtually anyone to accelerate and scale their clinical research efforts.

Mimi’s partnerships demonstrate the power that combining science, medical understanding and accessibility in the right way can have. As Philipp Skribanowitz put it, “We are not only about helping people with hearing loss compensate for it, but also trying to prevent hearing loss in the first place.” He went on to say that, “Our technology helps you listen at a lower volume, which can prevent further damage to your hearing. This is a part of promoting healthy hearing.” It is refreshing to see a startup whose goal goes beyond an exit and motivations are for the greater good of us all, let alone our ears.

(Updates to this article were made on 4/11/18.)