Affordable solar-powered hearing aids are here

Solar Ear hearing aids deliver eco-friendly, solar-powered, low-cost hearing care using rechargeable AA batteries and a portable solar charger, reducing battery waste and enabling off-grid, accessible audiology for underserved communities and sustainable healthcare.

For anyone unfamiliar with hearing aids, you should know that they require a great deal of two things: money and batteries.

Luckily, one humanitarian project aims to make the medical devices much cheaper and more eco-friendly. Solar Ear, a Brazil-based company, creates low-cost solar hearing aids that get their juice from solar-powered batteries.

Not only are the devices much more affordable than traditional hearing aids, they decrease reliance on fossil fuel-based power as green power generation improves and seriously cut back on battery waste.

Solar Ear creator Howard Weinstein designed the digital hearing aid to rely on two rechargeable AA batteries. Users simply place the batteries inside a palm-sized solar charger that harnesses solar energy effectively during the day, and after about six-to-eight hours the unit is fully juiced. The batteries then charge the hearing aid, which fits neatly inside the ear.

Batteries typically retain power for about one week before needing a boost of sunlight again. In addition to deriving their power from a clean, renewable resource, the batteries boast a two-to-three-year lifespan; traditional hearing aid batteries need to be replaced weekly.

While Solar Ear is certainly good news for the earth, it also offers a huge advantage for impoverished people. The device’s solar element means even those without access to electricity in developing nations can use hearing aids, and its low price tag (about $100) is good news for the poor and/or uninsured.

The company’s operations also create jobs for members of the deaf community: all of the employees that work on Solar Ear’s devices are deaf. Plus, the actual product itself is not patented, meaning other companies could adopt Solar Ear’s design and manufacture a similar green, low-cost hearing aid.

The innovative device was designated as a Tech Award Laureate and currently can be found in Brazil, Botswana, where African mobile networks are adopting solar for base stations, and Palestine’s West Bank, but Solar Ear expects to expand into Mexico, China, India and Canada in 2010. And now that designers have shown that eco-friendly elements can successfully be implemented into hearing aids, we’re excited to see what other green and low-cost medical devices will emerge in 2010.

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