Widex is one of the world’s largest hearing aid manufacturers. Widex works intimately with international audiology specialists and researchers. Widex has developed a wide array of advanced digital hearing aid solutions. In 1995, they developed the world’s first commercially available 100% digital in-the-ear hearing aid.
Widex is a Danish company and was founded in 1956 by the Tøpholm and Westermann families. Widex is still owned by the descendants of the original founders. The current president and CEO of Widex is Jørgen Jensen. Mr. Jensen was appointment President in 2013. Widex hearing aids are sold in over 100 countries worldwide and employ almost 4,000 people.
Widex’s worldwide headquarters is located in Allerød, Denmark, just north of Copenhagen. This ultra modern building uses groundwater for cooling and heating. There is also a wind turbine beside the building to generate electricity.
Headquarters:
Widex A/S, Nymoellevej 6
3540 Lynge
Denmark
Widex and Sivantos (which owns Signia, TruHearing, Audibene, HearUSA, Hear.com, and Rexton) announced an $8,000,000,000 (eight billion dollar) merger in 2018. This merger of two of the world giants in the hearing care industry created the third largest hearing aid manufacturing corporation in the world.
Also in 2018, Widex launched Widex Evoke, the worlds first hearing aid to incorporate machine learning technology.
Subsidiaries:
Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, Ukraine, USA.
Representation in:
More than 100 countries in all parts of the world.
Global market share:
Global market share is approximately 10% of hearing aid sales worldwide. Standalone, Widex is among the six largest hearing aid manufacturers in the world. Their parent company, WS Audiology (Widex & Signia), is the 3rd largest hearing aid conglomerate in the world.
2018 Widex Employees Worldwide:
Over 4.000 worldwide, of which 850 of these are in Denmark.
Widex Production Facilities:
Lynge, Denmark & Tallinn, Estonia.
Since its founding, Widex has been committed to three core values that continue to define its decisions and inspire their work:
Originality
Widex doesn’t follow the beaten path. They have their own audiological identity and always aim for the best audiological solutions for their clientele with hearing loss. Their originality expresses itself through their flat organizational structure, which facilitates interdisciplinary work and the production of innovative products and solutions.
Perseverance
Emphasizing professionalism and broad interdisciplinary expertise, Widex has created a solid foundation for co-operation with universities, research facilities and independent experts from around the world. When they find a good idea, they nurture and work hard to realize it.
Reliability
For Widex, reliability means thorough quality control of each individual hearing aid, as well as a good partnership with our world-wide network of subsidiaries and distributors. Reliability also means ensuring that our hearing aid users are provided with comprehensive and reliable information.
Widex is Learning From Their Newest Hearing Aid, The Evoke.
WIDEX EVOKE with SoundSense technology was designed to put users themselves in control of their most difficult hearing situations. EVOKE users have indeed taken this opportunity to do that and in the process, are helping Widex to learn more about them. This information will help Widex to make the EVOKE and all future Widex hearing aids even better.
SoundSense Learn is an Artificially Intelligent system, artificial intelligence refers to systems that can solve tasks humans are inherently good at – examples are: driving an automobile, doing dishes, etc. SoundSense Learn has morphed into an entirely genra by helping wearers adjust their own hearing aids precisely in the moment, something no other humans can replicate to the same degree of accuracy.
Widex’s SoundSense Learn smartphone app is included in every EVOKE hearing aid and uses machine learning to guide users in the optimizing of their own sound settings to their specific needs. This app gathers a variety of anonymous data and automatically updates over time the sound output settings in their hearing aids.
Tagging a Specific Sound Environment
The tagging of custom sound settings has proved to be an interesting group of data generated by EVOKE users.
Widex has found that many people have created a sound setting and tagged it with a label; for instance, “Work,” which suggests that it is something that wearers need and want. From the SoundSense Learn app, Widex gathers the data of how wearers like their sound settings.
Most modern hearing aids provide the wearer the ability to customize their sound settings by adjusting their gain by frequency. Adjusting gain or volume by frequency works well in many situations after the initial settings have been set by a skilled hearing care professional. However, some sound environments are so complex that hitting the perfect combination of settings can be almost impossible. That’s where Widex SoundSense technology comes in.
Widex hearing aids have always been known for their superior sound quality, but SoundSense Learn has added an even higher level of quality on top of that. By using the machine learning algorithm, together with the already awesome Widex sound processing algorithm, these two key ingredients combine to form a the state-of-the art AI algorithm.
The AI algorithm learns about the wearers optimal preferred sound setting every time a user finds the sound to be a below their expectations in a specific sound environment. SoundSense Learns improves the hearing aids sound output settings by simply asking the user to compare two settings in an “A/B” comparison, that is carefully selected by the algorithm. This allows the program to optimize the sound settings in the new environment quickly.
By collating and analyzing this anonymous data, the WIDEX EVOKE hearing aid system will continue to improve over time.
