Title: An IoT-based smart hearing aid for hearing and speech impaired persons

Authors: Solomon C. Nwaneri; Charles C. Osuagwu

Addresses: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Lagos, Akoka Lagos, Nigeria ' Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Lagos, Akoka Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract: Hearing and speech loss are impairments that affect more than 5% of the world's population. This paper presents a smart hearing aid designed to assist individuals suffering from both hearing and speech impairment. The hardware consists mainly of a digital hearing aid unit, a Bluetooth audio receiver module and a smart phone with Android application designed on android studio using recogniser intent and Google application programming interfaces (APIs) installed and programmed. An innovative internet of things (IoTs)-based interaction between the modules enabled hearing and speech impaired patients communicate effectively through the use of the hearing aid, text-to-speech converter and speech-to-text converter. The device was tested on 30 subjects from the ear, nose, and throat (ENT) clinic of Lagos University Teaching Hospital Lagos, Nigeria. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the device in assisting patients suffering from various degrees of hearing loss. Hearing and speech impaired persons will benefit immensely from the use of the proposed device in communicating with others.

Keywords: Android application; analogue-to-digital converters; hearing loss; digital-to-analogue converters; internet of things; IoT; hearing loss; smart hearing aid; smart phone; text-to-speech.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2022.125101

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2022 Vol.40 No.1, pp.39 - 53

Received: 14 Sep 2019
Accepted: 10 Dec 2019
Published online: 30 Aug 2022 *

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