Because of AI, 30 hearing-aid users understood far more words in heavy noise — according to the company that makes the device.

Fortell's neural source-separation hearing aid (launched Dec 2025) reports a pre-registered double-blind 30-person trial against Phonak's Audéo Infinio Sphere showing a 9.2 dB vs 3.1 dB signal-to-noise improvement on QuickSIN, alongside a 20-person blinded preference study published in the International Journal of Audiology (May 2026).

Sources

• primaryIJA: Spatial AI consistently preferred to state-of-the-art hearing aids in multitalker noisetandfonline.com
• primaryIJA (Oct 2026): Spatial AI improves speech intelligibility for hearing aid wearers in challenging multitalker noise (30-person RCT)doi.org
• primaryFortell evidence page (intelligibility trial)fortell.com
• secondaryIndependent summary: what is actually known about Fortellaudiologyassociates.org

Editor's notes

The 30-person intelligibility trial is now peer-reviewed: IJA, epub Oct 8, 2026 (PubMed 42850968), described as pre-registered, double-blind, randomised. Evidence stays C under the company-run rule despite the NYU co-authors. verify: the abstract gives a 9.2 dB SNR-50 improvement and lab SNR gains over unaided of 2.3 dB (control) vs 15.5 dB (Fortell); the "9.2 dB vs 3.1 dB" framing in the effect line comes from the company page and should be checked against the paper's results table. No registry ID is given in the PubMed record.

History

• Oct 22, 2026Weekly run: 30-person trial confirmed in IJA (Oct 2026); journal source added, caveat updated, grades unchanged.
• Oct 22, 2026Added.

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