This week's rounds
Hearing one voice in a noisy room.
If you have hearing loss, a busy restaurant can be the hardest place to be. Voices blur together, and a hearing aid can turn up the chatter along with the voice you want.
A team in New York tested a hearing aid that uses AI to focus on the person in front of you and soften the chatter around you. In a double-blind, randomized test, 30 adults listened to sentences over loud background talk, wearing both the AI hearing aid and a hearing aid already on sale that also uses AI noise reduction.
Every participant understood more words with the AI device, and the gap widened as the noise got louder. It's a prescription hearing aid, fitted by a hearing professional.
- One controlled lab setup, with background chatter coming from one direction. Real rooms are messier.
- Fortell, the company that makes it, funded the study, and seven of the nine authors work there.
- One study of 30 people.
Study: Morris et al., "Spatial AI improves speech intelligibility for hearing aid wearers in challenging multitalker noise," International Journal of Audiology, Oct 8, 2026. Read the study · Read Issue #3
Your eye check result, before you leave.
In Tanzania, an on-the-spot AI eye check result plus a talk with a health worker got almost twice as many people with diabetes to the eye clinic (35.9% vs 18.2%). One country, and it measured clinic visits, not sight saved.