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<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ve tried different brands of hearing aids, and they’re good, but they’re not this good,\u201d says Martin in a Zoom interview. He visited the team in Soho, did the street test, and was delighted when he tried it with his wife and daughter at their favorite restaurant, with de Jonge sitting with the laptop several tables away. But the clincher for Martin was a cocktail party.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was here in our building, and I was at a party upstairs, and I had my old hearing aids in,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m sitting talking to four people, and I realized I can’t understand any of them, and I go, wait, I have these new hearing aids. I went downstairs, put them in, came back, and I could hear everyone.\u201d Now he wears them all the time, and even made a joke about hearing aids on Saturday Night Live\u2019s 50th anniversary special. \u201cI don’t really think about the way it used to be,\u201d he says. \u201cI used to dread going to a restaurant, and now I don’t.\u201d His friend Balaban, once he got into the beta test, is similarly smitten. \u201cThis is a significant improvement over the absurdly pricey devices I\u2019d been using,\u201d Balaban says.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a sad fact that some Medicare and many health insurance plans do not cover hearing aids, a policy that dooms millions to an aural bardo of conversational exclusion.<\/p>\n
Other machers aren\u2019t public, but de Jonge assures me they are mostly names invoked in boldface type. Since there are only a few dozen beta units, this means that some powerful people have been shuttled to a waiting list. Balaban\u2019s wife, Lynn Grossman, recounts attending a Labor Day dinner with over 100 people, generally of a certain age, in a private room in a restaurant, thinking that her husband and another guy\u2014a famous CEO in the fashion world\u2014were the only ones who could hear, because of Fortell. \u201cAfter, I think Bob got 12 or 14 emails saying, \u2018How do I get those hearing aids?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Now that the product is launched, Fortell will sell hearing aids in a single clinic on Manhattan\u2019s Park Avenue. It\u2019s decked out like a posh lounge, with the devices on display in a tasteful presentation that\u2019s straight out of the Apple retail playbook. Hanging on the wall is a silicon wafer with the circuitry of the custom chips. In the early stages, his staff of four audiologists will serve only a couple of dozen customers a week, to make sure everything goes smoothly. In any case, while ramping up production, the supply will be limited.<\/p>\n
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The chips used inside the hearing aids, on display in the lobby of Fortell.<\/p>\n
Photograph: Ali Cherkis<\/p>\n
This is great for Fortell, but it seems de Jonge\u2019s initial impulse to usher everyone\u2019s grandparents into the land of the hearing is in danger of being limited to the one percent, which doesn\u2019t exactly qualify him for a Salk medal. When I ask de Jonge how his invention can scale to change life for the masses, his replies, whether due to secrecy on future plans or just not having a good answer, seem hand-wavy. In his defense, Fortell has resisted the temptation to jack up the traditional price of premium hearing aids\u2014the $6,800 is actually a bit less than some other medically prescribed hearing aids. (As with other high-end hearing aids, the price is part of a package that includes fitting and support from professional audiologists.) Still, even that defensible price tag limits adoption; it\u2019s a sad fact that some Medicare and many health insurance plans do not cover hearing aids, a policy that dooms millions to an aural bardo of conversational exclusion, isolating them from loved ones and hastening dementia.<\/p>\n