An Australian engineer has developed a hearing aid that can be "trained" by its users to adjust automatically to their individual preferences for different sound environments.

Justin Zakis from the CRC for Cochlear Implant and Hearing Aid Innovation developed the hearing aid as part of his PhD, at the suggestion of supervisor, Harvey Dillon from the National Acoustics Laboratories.

"Every hearing aid user has their own personal preference for tone and volume settings in a given environment," said Zakis. "The user knows best about what works where."

Adjusting a hearing aid is necessary because different environments require different settings, and this in turn varies from one person to another.

For example, watching TV in an otherwise quiet room will have different requirements to talking to someone in a crowded café.

"But at the moment users usually have to go back to a clinic to get an audiologist to fine tune the adjustment."

The problem here is that the user has to explain to another person what they are or aren't hearing and then to rely on them to adjust the settings to improve the situation.

With the new device the user can simply use a remote control device to adjust the hearing-aid tone and volume settings to get the best sound as they go from one environment to another.

Once they find the best settings in an environment, they push what's called a "voting" button which stores the settings. At the same time, the device records and stores a description of the environment.

As this process is repeated in a number of environments, the hearing-aid learns the individual user's preferences.

"After a while it starts to look at the environmental parameters and predict the best settings for the user," said Zakis.

"This is not the first computerised hearing-aid, nor is it the first to be able to adapt to different listening situations, but it is the first trainable one," he added.

Zakis said feedback from trials done so far, involving 14 users in Melbourne and Sydney, was positive.

"Most people notice that after about a week of training they didn't have to adjust the hearing aid so often."

Zakis said a provisional patent was lodged yesterday and a commercial partner hopes to have the hearing-aids available next year.

According to Jonathan Galt of the Audiological Society of Australia such a development was "adding another layer of sophistication" to existing hearing-aids and could be "very very useful".

But he's not worried about it doing audiologists out of a job.

"We are consulted for our knowledge, not our ability to push buttons," he said. "We assess hearing loss and work out a rehabilitation strategy which includes choosing a hearing-aid."

"A pensioner on a budget who sits at home all day will not need a hearing-aid like this," he said, predicting "it'll cost a fortune".

Zakis said it would not necessarily cost a lot more to make but he had "no idea" of the price.

Good quality digital hearing-aids can cost between A$7,000 and A$10,000.

Harvey Dillon said the CRC would charge for intellectual property to recoup research and development costs.

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