Skip to content
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • News
  • About us
    • Our team
    • PhD students
    • Eriksholm’s timeline
    • History of hearing aids
    • Partnerships
    • Contact us
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • News
  • About us
    • Our team
    • PhD students
    • Eriksholm’s timeline
    • History of hearing aids
    • Partnerships
    • Contact us
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • News
  • About us
    • Our team
    • PhD students
    • Eriksholm’s timeline
    • History of hearing aids
    • Partnerships
    • Contact us
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • News
  • About us
    • Our team
    • PhD students
    • Eriksholm’s timeline
    • History of hearing aids
    • Partnerships
    • Contact us
Back

EVOTION

Niels Pontoppidan

Principal Scientist

Eriksholm Research Centre

EVOTION

Introduction

EVOTION was a Horizon 2020 project funded by European Commission with 13 partners running from 2016 to 2020. The overall aim of the project was to demonstrate how big data tools can support the development, monitoring, and the documentation of interventions in hearing health care.

EVOTION developed a number of components, hearing aids providing privacy preserving contextual information about sound environments, data collection tools for hearing aid users and clinicians, and a platform with analytical tools for policy makers. The project was not limited to a single intervention, instead it addressed multiple interventions that included auditory training, use of hearing aids, noise exposure, and self-management of noise reduction to ensure that the platform could address the wide range of interventions associated with hearing health care.

Aims

Eriksholm’s primary objective was to understand the relationship between hearing aid settings, acoustic context, time of day, day of week, and individual hearing characteristics. Our hypothesis was that the data collected from hearing aid use would reveal distinct groups of users with differing in needs for noise reduction in general and in specific situations. For instance we hypothesize that people with severe hearing loss would need more noise reduction late in the day than people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss.

Methodology

EVOTION recruited 1000 people with hearing loss at 5 clinical centers across Europe that all had the same clinical assessment and procedure. Participants where fitted with EVOTION hearing aids according to their audiogram, and a selection of four programs with different level of noise reduction. Participants also got a phone with the EVOTION app which provided the remote control and data collection features. The app also included instructional movies and auditory training. Each person used the hearing aid for 9-12 months while collecting data about the sound environments and how they operated their hearing aids with program changes and volume adjustments. Because of the lengthy duration, we refrained from alerting the hearing aid users to rate their hearing and relied solely on voluntarily provided data.

Results

EVOTION highlighted many challenges of implementing hearing aid research in the field. On of these challenges is stability of BlueTooth connection, and this was a significant barrier for many participants and required substantial tech-support from all clinical sites for keeping the data flowing. The key finding is that some hearing aid users change hearing aid setting to get more help in noisy situations around dinner time, but not earlier, and only in noise. This could be due to fatigue, and we continue to investigate this topic. When considering the degree of hearing loss, we saw indications that people with larger hearing losses also seek quieter situations after lunch compared to people with smaller hearing losses. Again, this could be related to fatigue and coping mechanisms which we continue to investigate. Finally, by pairing EVOTION data recorded by Oticon’s hearing aids with pulse data obtained from wrist bands worn by the users, we found that not only does increasing sound levels increase the heart rate, but above speaking levels more favorable signal-to-noise-ratios reduces the heart rate.

Publications

Loading...
Pontoppidan, N. H., Christensen, J. H. (2019). User behavior with EVOTION hearing aids, in: Ochmann M, Vorländer M, Fels J. (Eds.) [Presentation]. the 23rd International Congress on Acoustics, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Akustik e.V., Aachen, Germany, pp. 1–3, 2019
Gutenberg, J., Katrakazas, P., Trenkova, L., Murdin, L., Brdarić, D., Koloutsou, N., Ploumidou, K., Pontoppidan, N. H., & Laplante-Lévesque, A. (2018). Big data for Sound Policies: Toward Evidence-Informed Hearing Health Policies. American Journal of Audiology, 27(3S), 493–502. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_aja-imia3-18-0003
Dritsakis, G., Kikidis, D., Koloutsou, N., Murdin, L., Bibas, A., Ploumidou, K., Laplante-Lévesque, A., Pontoppidan, N. H., & Bamiou, D. (2018). Clinical validation of a public health policy-making platform for hearing loss (EVOTION): protocol for a big data study. BMJ Open, 8(2), e020978. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-020978
Gutenberg, J., Laplante-Lévesque, A., Pontoppidan, N.H. (2018). eHealth and Big Data Usage in Audiology-EVOTION: A European Research Project Generating Big Data Evidence [Conference Proceedings]. the Medical Informatics Europe 2018, Gothenburg, Sweden, April 24-26 2018.
Christensen, J. H., Petersen, M. K., Pontoppidan, N. H., Cremonini, M. (2018). Big Data Analytics in Healthcare: Design and Implementation for a Hearing Aid Case Study [Conference Proceedings]. the 14th International Conference on Signal-Image Technology & Internet-Based Systems (SITIS) (pp. 296-303). IEEE.
Pontoppidan, N.H., Rossing, R., Christensen, J.H., Bamiou, D., Dritsakis, G., Katrakazas, P., Koutsouris, D., et al. (2018). EVOTION Big data supporting public hearing health policies [Poster]. the International Hearing Aid Research Conference 2018.
Gutenberg, J., Tietz, L. H. B., Meedom, N. H., Laplante-Lévesque, A. (2018). Big Data Supporting Public Hearing Health Policiesm [Poster]. Medico Bazar, Lyngby, Denmark
Christensen, J. H., Pontoppidan, N. H., Rossing, R., Anisetti, M., Bamiou, D., Spanoudakis, G., Murdin, L., Bibas, T., Kikidiks, D., Dimakopoulos, N., Giotis, G., & Ecomomou, A. (2019). Fully synthetic longitudinal Real-World data from hearing aid wearers for public health policy modeling. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2019.00850
Christensen, J. H., Pontoppidan, N. H. (2019). EVOTION–Big Data Supporting Public Hearing Health Policies [Conference Proceedings]. of the IEEE 32nd International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS) (pp. 7-8).
Christensen, J., Pontoppidan, N. H., Anisetti, M., Bellandi,V., Cremonini, M. (2019). Improving hearing healthcare with Big Data analytics of real-time hearing aid data [Conference Proceedings]. 2019 IEEE World Congress on Services (SERVICES) (Vol. 2642, pp. 307-313)
Saunders, G. H., Christensen, J. H., Gutenberg, J., Pontoppidan, N. H., Smith, A., Spanoudakis, G., & Bamiou, D. (2020). Application of big Data to support Evidence-Based Public Health Policy Decision-Making for Hearing. Ear And Hearing, 41(5), 1057–1063. https://doi.org/10.1097/aud.0000000000000850
Christensen, J. H., Saunders, G. H., Porsbo, M., & Pontoppidan, N. H. (2021). The everyday acoustic environment and its association with human heart rate: evidence from real-world data logging with hearing aids and wearables. Royal Society Open Science, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.201345

Team

Niels Pontoppidan

Principal Scientist

Eriksholm Research Centre

Jeppe Høy Christensen

Principal Scientist

Eriksholm Research Centre

Partners

  • Eriksholm Research Centre, Denmark

  • University College London / Ear Institute

  • Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS), NTUA

  • City University London, CeNACS

  • University of Athens, Dep of Otolaryngology

  • Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine

  • Guy’s and Sct Thomas NHS Foundation Trust

  • Athens Technology Centre SA

  • Institute of Public Health for the Osijek-BaranyaCounty

  • Pazardzhik Regional Administration

  • University of Milan, SESAR

  • Athens Medical Group

  • Empelor GmbH

View all

You may also be interested in

Loading...
Alfi - Laboratory tests
CURRENT
Assessment of Listening-related Fatigue in Daily- Life (ALFi)
3008,1037,10303,10579,17331,17441

Cognitive Hearing Science, Personalised Audiology

Hearing loss can have significant consequences beyond a reduction in audibility. For example, greate...
Hearing loss can have significant consequences beyond a reduction in audibility. For example, greater levels…
Audiological User Pain Points
CURRENT
Audiological User Pain Points
4923,4860,4409

Personalised Audiology

When asking hearing aid users about their challenges, the category hearing in noise most often top t...
When asking hearing aid users about their challenges, the category hearing in noise most often…
Ecophysiology of Hearing 
CURRENT
Ecophysiology of Hearing 
10303

Personalised Audiology

It is currently not possible to objectively measure and evaluate hearing outcomes in daily life. Th...
It is currently not possible to objectively measure and evaluate hearing outcomes in daily life….
Hearing aid preferences for noise reduction and high frequency gain
CURRENT
Hearing aid preferences for noise reduction and high frequency gain
4409

Personalised Audiology

A key challenge for audiologists and hearing aid users during fine-tuning is to find the right balan...
A key challenge for audiologists and hearing aid users during fine-tuning is to find the…
MERHO: Measuring and evaluating real-world hearing-aid outcomes 
CURRENT
Understanding real-world hearing 
10303

Personalised Audiology

New hearing-aid features and listening programs are designed to further improve hearing-aid users' l...
New hearing-aid features and listening programs are designed to further improve hearing-aid users’ listening experiences,…

You may also be interested in

Alfi - Laboratory tests
CURRENT
Assessment of Listening-related Fatigue in Daily- Life (ALFi)
3008,1037,10303,10579,17331,17441

Cognitive Hearing Science, Personalised Audiology

Hearing loss can have significant consequences beyond a reduction in audibility. For example, greate...
Hearing loss can have significant consequences beyond a reduction in audibility. For example, greater levels…
Audiological User Pain Points
CURRENT
Audiological User Pain Points
4923,4860,4409

Personalised Audiology

When asking hearing aid users about their challenges, the category hearing in noise most often top t...
When asking hearing aid users about their challenges, the category hearing in noise most often…
Ecophysiology of Hearing 
CURRENT
Ecophysiology of Hearing 
10303

Personalised Audiology

It is currently not possible to objectively measure and evaluate hearing outcomes in daily life. Th...
It is currently not possible to objectively measure and evaluate hearing outcomes in daily life….
Hearing aid preferences for noise reduction and high frequency gain
CURRENT
Hearing aid preferences for noise reduction and high frequency gain
4409

Personalised Audiology

A key challenge for audiologists and hearing aid users during fine-tuning is to find the right balan...
A key challenge for audiologists and hearing aid users during fine-tuning is to find the…
MERHO: Measuring and evaluating real-world hearing-aid outcomes 
CURRENT
Understanding real-world hearing 
10303

Personalised Audiology

New hearing-aid features and listening programs are designed to further improve hearing-aid users' l...
New hearing-aid features and listening programs are designed to further improve hearing-aid users’ listening experiences,…

People are our most
valuable source of
insights

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

Youtube

  • Eriksholm Research Centre
  • Rørtangvej 20
  • DK-3070 Snekkersten
  • Denmark
We are a part of Oticon, a world leader in hearing care. We share the same philosophy that people are our main source of insights
Bliv testperson
  • +45 48 29 89 00
  • mail@eriksholm.com
  • Cookie policy
  • Disclaimer

© 2025 Eriksholm – Designed by Aveo web&marketing

Manage consent to cookies
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service expressly requested by the subscriber or user, or solely for the purpose of transmitting a communication via an electronic communication network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is necessary to create user profiles for the purpose of sending advertisements or to track the user on a website or across multiple websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
Preferences
{title} {title} {title}