Starkey MEA’s new launch of its Omega AI-powered hearing device in the UAE and Middle East is redefining hearing, health, and human connection. Achin Bhowmik, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering at Starkey, tells HEALTH how the conjunction of technology and AI innovation is making sense of the world, one decibel at a time.
Achin Bhowmik, Ph.D.,
Chief Technology Officer, and Executive
Vice President of Engineering at Starkey
As we step into the month of hearing awareness and usher in World Hearing Day on March 3, we need to understand the full impact of the spiked incidence of hearing loss in the world.
According to the World Health Organization, nearly 1.5 billion people worldwide live with some degree of hearing impairment, and by 2050, that number is projected to rise to 2.5 billion. More alarmingly, over one billion young adults are already at risk due to preventable causes, from unsafe listening habits to environmental noise.
Yet the most devastating impact of hearing loss is not merely the inability to hear. It is the slow erosion of connection, from conversations, to relationships, to the world itself. And increasingly, research shows, to cognitive health.
This is the crisis that Achin Bhowmik, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering at Starkey, has spent the better part of his career trying to solve. And he is doing that not by making hearing aids louder, but by making them smarter.
Bhowmik’s journey to hearing health is anything but conventional. Before joining Starkey eight years ago, he spent nearly two decades at Intel Corporation, leading work in computational perception—teaching machines to see, hear, and understand the world like humans do. He is also an adjunct professor at Stanford University, where he teaches sensory augmentation, artificial intelligence, and cognitive neuroscience. “I was working on helping robots understand humans,” he says. “Then I realised I could use the same science to help humans understand each other better.”
That shift was sparked by a conversation with Bill Austin, a legendary figure in hearing science who has fitted hearing aids for presidents, popes, and royalty. Austin had a vision: hearing aids should not merely amplify sound; they should restore understanding.
Hearing Goes Beyond Listening, It’s About Perception
For decades, hearing aids did one thing exceptionally well—amplification. They boosted sound based on the user’s hearing loss profile, compensating for frequencies the ear could no longer detect. In quiet, one-on-one settings, this worked beautifully.
But in restaurants, family gatherings, or business meetings—particularly places where communication matters most—traditional hearing aids often failed. Users complained that everything became louder: voices, clattering plates, background chatter. Many simply removed their devices.
The problem, Bhowmik explains, is not volume. “It is signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)—the brain’s ability to separate the voice you want to hear from the noise you don’t.”
Normal hearing brains can manage this reasonably well. Brains affected by long-term hearing loss cannot. Over time, lack of clear auditory input leads to neural atrophy, weakening the brain’s ability to distinguish speech from noise.
This is why hearing loss is now strongly linked to cognitive decline and dementia. The breakthrough came with a radical idea: if the brain uses deep neural networks (DNN) to process sound, why shouldn’t hearing aids?
Traditional hearing aids rely on digital signal processors (DSPs), which simply don’t have the power to run deep neural networks, Starkey’s engineers had to build something entirely new: a custom processor designed specifically to run AI models inspired by the human brain.
The result is Omega AI, Starkey’s most advanced hearing platform yet.
Achin elaborated, “At its core is a deep neural network trained on vast datasets of noisy speech, enabling the device to identify, enhance, and prioritise human voices while suppressing irrelevant noise. Our new flagship platform Omega AI delivers up to 28 per cent improved speech intelligibility and up to 8 decibels signal-to-noise ratio improvement, with up to 51 hours of battery life and 10x more durable waterproof coating. It’s not incremental; it’s transformative.”
Perhaps the most profound implication of Omega AI is what it does over time. By consistently delivering cleaner speech signals, the device helps retrain the brain itself, a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity.
Studies from institutions such as Johns Hopkins have shown that untreated hearing loss dramatically increases the risk of dementia. Mild hearing loss doubles the risk; severe loss increases it fivefold. Proper hearing intervention, by contrast, can slow or even reverse aspects of cognitive decline.
“Hearing aids are not optional accessories,” Bhowmik says. “They are cognitive health devices,” added Achin.
Heightening Cognition and Spatial Awareness
Omega AI also tackles another often-overlooked problem: spatial hearing. Humans don’t just hear sounds; we locate them. Direction, distance, and depth all contribute to how natural and comfortable listening feels.
Omega AI introduces what Starkey calls DNN-360, a neural-network-driven system that preserves spatial awareness. By mimicking how the brain processes timing differences, intensity differences, and ear-shape acoustics, the device allows wearers to instinctively know where sounds are coming from.
The effect is subtle but profound. Conversations feel natural. Listening is less tiring. Social withdrawal, which is a common side effect of hearing loss, becomes less likely.
More Than a Hearing Device
Then there are the features no one used to associate with hearing aids at all. Achin explained how Omega AI devices track physical activity, monitor overall health, and include fall detection that can automatically alert loved ones in an emergency. He recalls an incident when a man who was using the device had a fall and the device immediately alerted caregivers who arrived to help him.
Omega AI devices also stream calls, music, and audiobooks. Battery life stretches beyond two full days, remarkable for a device performing continuous AI processing. They even offer real-time language translation, turning spoken Arabic into English or Spanish into English directly in the wearer’s ears. Achin, who does not suffer from hearing loss, wears the device himself. “I get better hearing than normal human hearing,” he says, smiling. “Why wouldn’t I use it?”
The Future in Your Ear
In Bhowmik’s vision, Omega AI is only the beginning. As AI assistants become woven into daily life, hearing devices may become our most natural interface with technology, always on, always listening, always assisting. These are no longer medical devices alone. They are companions, translators, memory aids, and cognitive partners.
Hearing aids need to be fitted by professionals, and Starkey MEA is currently training audiologists, doctors, and hearing specialists within the UAE to fully understand the benefits of this technology and deliver optimal performance tailored to each individual’s needs.
