Our vision: Hearing for all!

Our name is our programme “Hearing4all”, meaning hearing for everyone. Our goal is to eliminate the negative effects of hearing loss on individuals by providing accessible and affordable, efficient and effective technical hearing solutions for everyone, anywhere, anytime.

A big goal, but with more than 15 million people affected, hearing loss is a widespread disease in Germany alone. There is already a wide range of hearing aids and diagnostic tools that improve the quality of life for many people. However, these reach their limits in certain situations, so that applied basic research is useful and necessary to reach new technological levels.

Globally, only a minority of people have access to good diagnostics and modern hearing systems. We have therefore set ourselves the goal of digitising processes and methods and thus improving care worldwide: The Virtual Hearing Clinic.

To make “hearing for all” a reality, the part of the population with age-related progressive hearing loss but not yet diagnosed (“subclinical population”) must also be taken into account. By incorporating technology originally developed in the field of technical hearing aids into conventional consumer electronics (mobile phones, videoconferencing systems, televisions, etc.), we are developing solutions to compensate for such hearing loss at an early stage.

All of the questions examined have their origins in unsolved clinical and practical problems. Through close cooperation with industry and collaboration with scientists from all over the world, we want to make our vision a reality.

We are grateful for the support of the Federal Government, without whose support our work would not be possible. Since 2013, our cluster has been funded as a so-called cluster of excellence within the framework of the “Excellence Strategy”. This programme aims to sustainably strengthen Germany as a location for science and research, to further improve its international competitiveness and to promote excellence at German universities.