The University of Southampton has developed a new hearing screening test which could help the estimated 100 million people suffering from hearing loss in China. This new Chinese version is based on a hearing screening test developed by the University’s Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR), which has already been taken by more than a million people across Europe. The tests aim to address the fact that hundreds of millions of people worldwide have hearing loss but only a fraction obtain hearing aids that would help them to overcome hearing difficulties. The percentage of people with hearing loss using hearing aids has been estimated to be only 16 per cent in Europe, while the figure is as low as 1 per cent in China.
