The long-term objective is to develop a universal programming unit for the prescriptive fitting of programmable hearing aids. The unit will embody a generalized fitting procedure that can be used with any of the programmable hearing aids that are currently available. Phase I of the project will be concerned with developing a prototype unit to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach. Phase II will evaluate the prototype in terms of the effectiveness of the fitting procedure as well as its ease of use. The system will then be modified to eliminate any shortcomings observed during the experimental evaluations and expanded to cover all currently available programmable hearing aids. A stand alone universal programming unit will result from these effects.
