Based on years of research and development at Western University in London, Canada, AHead Simulations has officially released their first training simulator, CARL, to market.
CARL simulates a hearing loss patient to provide users the ability to fit hearing aids outside of a clinical environment. Ears developed directly from CT scans provide a realistic anatomical model with clinically relevant ear canal acoustics.
CARL is equipped with a tracking system within its head to provide a real-time video-feed of its ear canals for feedback on hearing aid fitting procedures. Users can receive feedback to how far objects are placed in the ear canal and their distance to the eardrum, all while recording their performance.
AHead Simulations resulted from a three-year research project from President & Founder Rob Koch, that has since seen commercial success with dozens of CARLs around North America and Europe. “It is very exciting seeing the results of our research flourish into a product that can help individuals in the field with their training requirements,” says Rob. “With our research finding students who used CARL performed better in clinical scenarios than those students who did not, we are very optimistic in CARL’s ability to help better the standard of training in the field.”
