New Oticon Opn S™ Hearing Aid Enables People with Hearing Loss to Understand Speech at a Level on Par with Normal Hearing

The new Oticon Opn S™ helps people with hearing loss thrive in noisy venues, such as bars and restaurants

Copenhagen, Denmark, February 19th, 2019 – From the company that introduced the world’s first internet-connected hearing aid, comes a new hearing aid to enable people with hearing loss to experience speech understanding at a level on par with people with normal hearing*. The new Oticon Opn S™ helps people with hearing loss thrive in noisy venues, such as bars and restaurants. Oticon Opn S™ also says goodbye to feedback , i.e. the bothersome whistling that hearing aid wearers commonly experience, and features all of the lifestyle-enhancing connectivity features that Oticon is renowned for revolutionising.

With the groundbreaking Oticon Opn™ hearing aid, Oticon said goodbye to traditional hearing aid technology and introduced a better way of supporting people with hearing loss in noisy environments, which it dubbed the ‘open sound experience’. Now, Oticon is set to add new layers of innovation to deliver even further improvements in speech understanding and listening effort with the new Oticon Opn S™**, enabling people with hearing loss to enjoy speech understanding in noisy venues at a level on par with normal hearing. Opn S™ can actually provide the brain with up to 30% more speech cues***. Opn S™ also features a new OpenSound Booster™ in the Oticon On App so that users can very simply select a boost of hearing support whenever they feel they need it.

Everyone has likely experienced acoustic feedback, for example, when a microphone gets too close to the speakers at a concert, but for hearing aid users the simple act of hugging someone can cause this high-pitched noise. This well-known bothersome side effect of hearing aids, which even non-users are aware of, is eliminated1 by Oticon’s new groundbreaking OpenSound Optimizer™ in the Opn S™****.

“Parties, family dinners and restaurants can be extremely daunting when you have a hearing loss,” says Ole Asboe Jørgensen, President, Oticon Brand, Global. “The background noise and multiple speakers makes following conversation challenging and many would rather avoid these situations. We are extremely pleased to announce that with Oticon Opn S™, for the first time, users with uncomplicated hearing loss can experience speech understanding in difficult soundscapes as well as people with normal hearing. We know this will make a huge difference to the lives of users, and without the risk of feedback, users can also feel confidently comfortable wearing their hearing aids.”

Please check with your local Oticon representative to confirm availability in your region. Oticon Opn S™ will be made available in the UK the week commencing 11th March 2019. For more information on Oticon visit: www.oticon.global

-ENDS-

About Oticon
500 million people worldwide suffer from hearing loss. The majority are over the age of 50 while eight percent are under the age of 18. It is Oticon's ambition that our customers - hearing clinics throughout the world - prefer to use our products for people with impaired hearing. Through passion, dedication and professional expertise, Oticon develops and manufactures hearing aids for both adults and children. Oticon supports every kind of hearing loss from mild to severe and we pride ourselves on developing some of the most innovative hearing aids in the market. Headquartered out of Denmark, we are a global company and part of William Demant Group with more than 13,000 employees and revenues of over DKK 13 billion. www.oticon.global

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* “For people with uncomplicated hearing loss”, Juul Jensen 2017, Oticon Whitepaper
**Juul Jensen 2019, Oticon Whitepaper, Oticon Opn S 1
***Speech intelligibility index, ANSI S3.5
****Callaway 2019, Oticon Whitepaper