Recently, at the 89th China International Medical Equipment Fair (CMEF), the domestic medical enterprise Sivantos Group unveiled its first series of medical-grade hearing aids, uOrigin, tailored to the language habits of Chinese people. Leveraging customized chips and innovative algorithm technology, the overall performance indicators of the hearing aids have reached the international first-class level.
It is reported that some performance indicators of this product (including artificial intelligence noise reduction and original whistle suppression) have already achieved global leadership, making the Chinese auditory platform an industry pioneer.
In China, the number of people with hearing impairment exceeds 200 million. Among the elderly population over 65 years old, nearly 120 million people suffer from varying degrees of hearing loss. According to the World Health Organization, globally, over 1.5 billion people experience varying degrees of hearing loss.
For those with normal hearing, hearing aids may seem unfamiliar and distant. However, these tiny devices hold significant potential.
A medical-grade hearing aid often integrates many high-precision electronic components, involving interdisciplinary research and production processes in areas such as chips, algorithms, artificial intelligence, medical health, acoustics, ergonomics, and precision instrument manufacturing. Among them, chips and algorithms are the most critical and have the highest technological barriers. Their performance not only determines whether users can "hear," but more importantly, whether they can "hear clearly and understand," reproducing true sound while avoiding noise interference.
Due to the extremely high technological barriers of chip and algorithm technologies, China's hearing aid industry development lags far behind that of developed countries in Europe and America. Import brands occupy over 90% of the Chinese hearing aid market share, while domestic brands account for less than 10%.
The first heterogeneous hexa-core custom chip—provided by Union Imaging Medical
According to Wang Fa, President of the Hearing Aid Business Unit of Union Microelectronics, the core demand of hearing aid users is to hear clearly without interference, which is indeed challenging to achieve. Take "hearing clearly" as an example, this requires hearing aids to accurately amplify sound, compensate for the individual hearing loss of each user, and accurately identify speech and background noise in various complex environments, while eliminating noise interference.
To address this, Union Microelectronics has innovated the industry's first "true ear twin" hearing platform, leveraging its independently developed heterogeneous hexa-core chip and edge-side neural network algorithms. It deeply simulates the auditory front-end signal processing of the human ear and customizes sound compensation for each user based on dimensions such as the degree of hearing loss, physiological parameters, and discomfort threshold.
"China has one of the largest populations with hearing impairments globally, yet there are few products tailored specifically for Chinese people based on Chinese language characteristics and the daily sound environment of Chinese individuals," said Wang Fa. He noted that the differences between Chinese and English pronunciation are significant. Therefore, the team has created an original Chinese hearing platform focusing on Chinese language characteristics, emphasizing tones, mid-to-high-frequency speech, and initial consonants of syllables. This platform deeply customizes Chinese speech enhancement algorithms and Chinese hearing formulas, significantly improving the clarity, intelligibility, and comfort of Chinese listeners.
"The sustainable and healthy development of the hearing industry undoubtedly requires joint efforts from industry, universities, hospitals, and clinical stakeholders to form an innovation ecosystem," said Liu Yue, CEO of Union Microelectronics.
He further explained that in the future, Union Microelectronics will collaborate with several top-tier hospitals, experts, and universities to integrate industry, academia, research, and medicine for innovative development. They will work together to refine product technologies, conduct basic and forward-looking research, and tackle severe issues related to ear and hearing difficulties. Additionally, they plan to establish a hearing education and training institute, bringing together authoritative experts from interdisciplinary fields to cultivate high-quality talents for the hearing industry. Furthermore, they will jointly establish technical standards, service standards, and a hearing health database for the Chinese hearing industry, promoting the overall improvement of hearing health services.
