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The Evolution of Widex and The Best Hearing Aid Ever Made
Widex Mission Statement
“It is our mission, through originality, perseverance, and reliability, to develop high-quality hearing instruments that give people with a hearing loss the same opportunities for communication as those with normal hearing.”
Widex is one of the world’s largest hearing aid manufacturers. Widex works intimately with international hearing aid specialists and researchers. Widex has developed a wide array of advanced digital hearing aid products. In 1995, they developed the world’s first commercially available 100% digital in-the-ear hearing aid.
The Widex corporation was founded in 1956 by the Tøpholm and Westermann families in Denmark. The company is still owned by descendants of the original founders. The current president and CEO is Jørgen Jensen. Mr. Jensen was appointed President in 2013. Widex hearing aids are sold in over 100 countries worldwide and employ almost 4,000 people.
Widex’s world headquarters is located in Allerød, Denmark, just north of Copenhagen. This ultra modern facility reflects the company’s view on independence, sustainability, and environmental issues. This building uses groundwater for both cooling and heating. Electricity is generated using a wind turbine.
Widex and Sivantos, a spin-off of Siemens Audiology Solutions, (Sivantos also owned Signia, TruHearing, Audibene, HearUSA, Hear.com, and Rexton) announced an $8,000,000,000 (eight billion dollar) merger in 2018. The merger of these two giants of the hearing care industry created the third largest hearing aid manufacturing conglomerate in the world. Also in 2018, Widex launched the groundbreaking Widex Evoke, the world’s first hearing aid to incorporate machine learning technology.
Widex World Headquarters:
Widex A/S, Nymoellevej 6
3540 Lynge
Denmark
Widex Subsidiaries Are Located In The Following Countries:
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, United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the United States.
Widex Has Representation in:
More than 100 countries around the world.
Widex Global market share:
Their global market share is approximately 10% of the entire hearing aid market worldwide. Standing alone, Widex was among the six largest hearing aid manufacturers in the world. Their newly formed (2018) parent company, WS Audiology (Widex & Signia combined), is the 3rd largest hearing aid conglomerate in the world.
2018 Widex Employees Worldwide:
Employees worldwide – 4,000,
850 employees work in Denmark.
Widex Production Facilities:
Primary production facilities are located in Lynge, Denmark, and Tallinn, Estonia, with many smaller support facilities located around the world.
Widex Core Values
Since its inception, Widex has been committed to three core values that continue to guide their decisions and inspire their work:
Originality
Widex has never followed the beaten path. They have their our own audiological identity, and always aim for the best audiological solutions for people with hearing loss. Their originality also expresses itself through their flat business organizational structure, which promotes interdisciplinary work and the production of innovative solutions.
Perseverance
Through their professionalism and broad interdisciplinary expertise, Widex has created a solid foundation for cooperation with universities, research facilities and independent hearing industry experts from all over the world. When they find a good idea, they nurture it and work hard to realize it.
Reliability
For Widex, reliability means the thorough quality control of each and every individual hearing aid, as well as providing good support for their worldwide network of subsidiaries and distributors. Reliability also means ensuring that their hearing aid users are provided with comprehensive and reliable information.
Widex is Learning From Their Newest Hearing Aid, The EVOKE.
The first data has been gathered from the ground-breaking WIDEX EVOKE hearing aid platform. The Widex Evoke has achieved a new level of Artificial Intelligence through its proprietary “machine learning” technology. Machine learning has brought breakthrough insights into how users are adjusting their own sound outputs in specific environments to improve their hearing experiences.
Widex launched the EVOKE hearing aids in April of 2018. The Widex EVOKE hearing aid is the first hearing aid to give its users the ability to employ real-time machine learning, allowing users to the ability to solve tricky hearing issues that they face in their daily lives.
WIDEX EVOKE with SoundSense technology was designed to put users themselves in control of their most difficult listening situations. EVOKE users have indeed taken this opportunity to do just that, and in the process are helping Widex to learn more about them and the performance of their hearing aids. This information will help Widex to make the EVOKE and all future Widex hearing products even better.
SoundSense Learn is an Artificial Intelligent System. Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to systems that can solve tasks that humans are inherently good at, such as driving a car or doing dishes, etc. SoundSense Learn has morphed into an entirely new genre by helping wearers adjust their own hearing aids precisely “in the moment”, something no other human could replicate with the same degree of accuracy.
Widex’s SoundSense along with the supporting EVOKE smartphone app is included with every EVOKE hearing aid. Evoke hearing aids uses machine learning to help guide users in optimizing their own sound settings to their specific needs. This app gathers a variety of anonymous data and automatically updates the sound settings of the wearers existing hearing aids.
Tagging Specific Sound Environments
The tagging of custom sound settings by EVOKE wearers has generated an interesting dataset that has provided Widex engineers with a wealth of valuable information.
For example, many people have created a sound setting and tagged it with a label for “Work,” which suggests that it is something that wearers need and want. The SoundSense Learn app, gathers this data of exactly 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.
The Best Hearing Aid Ever?
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 SoundSense machine learning algorithm, together with the already awesome Widex sound processing algorithm, these two key ingredients combine to form a state-of-the-art AI algorithm.
This AI algorithm learns about the wearers personally preferred sound settings each time the user adjusts their hearing aids for 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 for that wearer in that sound environment.
By collecting and analyzing this aggregate anonymous data, the already awesome WIDEX EVOKE hearing aid system will continue to improve over time. Widex believes that EVOKE is the best hearing aid ever produced and with the help of SoundSense Learn will get even better in the future.
