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“I’ve tried different brands of hearing aids, and they’re good, but they’re not that good,” Martin says in a Zoom interview. He visited the team in SoHo, did a street test, and was thrilled when he tried it out with his wife and daughter at their favorite restaurant, where de Jong was sitting with his laptop a few tables away. But the clincher for Martin was a cocktail party.
“I was here in the building we live in, and I was at a party upstairs, and I had my old hearing aids,” he says. “I was sitting there talking to four people, and I realized I couldn’t understand any of them, so I went and wait, I have these new hearing aids. I went downstairs, put them in there, and came back, and I could hear everyone.” He now wears them all the time, and even made a joke about using hearing aids Saturday Night Live50th anniversary special. “I don’t really think about the way things used to be,” he says. “I used to be afraid to go to a restaurant, and now I don’t.” His friend Balaban, once in beta testing, was similarly smitten. “This is a huge improvement over the expensive devices I was using,” says Balaban.
The other instruments are not public, but de Jong assured me that most of them are names in bold. Since there are only a few dozen beta units, this means that some strong people have been moved to the waiting list. Balaban’s wife, Lynn Grossman, recounts attending a Labor Day dinner with more than 100 people, generally of a certain age, in a private room at a restaurant, thinking that her husband and another man — a famous fashion executive — were the only ones who could hear, because of Fortel. “After that, I think Bob got 12 or 14 emails saying, ‘How do I get these hearing aids?’
Now that the product has been launched, Fortell will sell the hearing aids at one clinic on Park Avenue in Manhattan. It’s designed like a lavish lounge, where devices are displayed in a sleek presentation directly inspired by Apple’s retail playbook. Hanging on the wall is a silicon wafer with custom chip circuits. In the early stages, his staff of four audiologists would serve only a few dozen clients a week, making sure everything ran smoothly. However, while production increases, supply will be limited.
This is great for Fortell, but De Jonge’s initial drive to introduce everyone’s grandparents into the land of hearing seems in danger of being limited to the one percent, which doesn’t exactly qualify him for a Salk medal. When I ask de Jong how his invention could evolve to change the lives of the masses, his answers, whether due to secrecy about future plans or just the lack of a good answer, sound wavy. In his defense, Fortell has resisted the temptation to raise the traditional price of premium hearing aids, as the $6,800 price tag is actually quite a bit less than some other prescription hearing aids. (As with other high-end hearing aids, the price is part of a package that includes fitting and support from professional audiologists.) However, even this defensible price limits its adoption; It is a sad fact that some Medicare and many health insurance plans do not cover hearing aids, a policy that condemns millions to hearing isolation from conversational exclusion, isolating them from loved ones and accelerating the development of dementia.
It’s unclear whether Fortell’s technology might find its way into today’s less expensive over-the-counter hearing aids, made possible by a shift in regulation under Biden. These include Apple AirPods Pro 2 devices and entries from other consumer electronics brands, which are generally known to help people with hearing loss but not as much as high-end devices combined with professional support. Fortell’s suggestion requires careful testing and fine-tuning, and continuing with it for some time until the wearer gets used to the devices. However, this white glove approach will consume Fortel’s efforts for the next year and beyond. Expansion will come by opening clinics in a few select cities, and only later will Fortel consider expanding to allow others to sell the technology.