Hearing loss: there’s an app for that

The iPod Touch and the iPhone have an app for everything it seems. There’s apps for using Twitter, tracking stocks, playing games, creating new recipes and making sure you don’t burn them, learning French, the list goes on and on.

When is someone going to build a hearing aid app?

An app that turns an iPod into a fully-functioning hearing aid, it isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. The iPhone already has everything it needs: a microphone, two outputs and the ability to run software for sound processing. The iPod has all that except the microphone but I’m sure someone could build a cheap add-on. Are there wireless headphone for the iPod? That’d be even better.

This setup would make for a cheap assistive listening device. It would also be a poweful one as it could run the high-end software that is in today’s cutting edge hearing aids. I could imagine a day where all of the big-name manufacturers have their hearing-aid software available on the app store for download so you could pick and choose for a couple of dollars for each hearing aid.

All those people blasting their eardrums with their iPods could have the solution to their impending hearing loss without having to buy extra hardware!