In 1987, Siemens, now Sivantos, launched Telos, the world’s first remote control for hearing technology. Digital hearing aids provide greater flexibility and more accurate control of frequency lowering than was possible with analog hearing aids, with concomitant improvements in the benefits provided by frequency lowering.

Current hearing aids can recognize and classify the acoustic environments in which the hearing aid has been worn. This capability requires monitoring of the acoustic environment coupled with automatic sound recognition. It will be of great interest to see whether the clinical implementation of data monitoring will be used effectively to improve fitting and counseling and, in the longer term, to improve hearing aids.