What Is an Invisible Hearing Aid?

An invisible hearing aid, also referred to as an invisible-in-canal (IIC) hearing aid, is a style of hearing aid that fits entirely in the ear canal. The smallest hearing aid type available, IIC hearing aids sit deep enough in the ear canal so that they’re largely undetectable by anyone looking at the person wearing the hearing aids. Due to the way they’re worn, these hearing aids are custom-fitted to the wearer’s ear canal, and they don’t feature any external tubes and wires.

Most of the top hearing aid manufacturers offer at least one invisible hearing aid model.

How Invisible Hearing Aids Work
Invisible hearing aids require five elements to function:

• A microphone, which picks up sound from the wearer’s environment, converts it into electrical signals and sends those signals to an amplifier.
• An amplifier, which increases the sound waves and sends them to a digital signal processor.
• A digital signal processor (DSP), which processes the sound to deliver improved sound comfort and speech clarity to the ear.
• A receiver, or speaker, which receives sound from the DSP and emits it into the ear canal for the person to hear.
• A battery to power the device.

An invisible hearing aid houses each of these components in a tiny plastic shell that can fit comfortably inside the ear canal so the device remains virtually undetectable. Due to these size limitations, invisible hearing aids often lack features that other models may include, such as Bluetooth compatibility.