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For hearing aid industry disruption, see iHear.[1] Unfortunately, they run on Kickstarter time. (Like mañana, but without the sense of urgency.) They just slipped their delivery date from Q1 2016 to Q2 2016.

[1] http://www.ihearmedical.com/

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I suspect this slip is due to having to deal with the FDA. If you look through their FAQ and look at the regulation rigmarole they have to deal with just for their hearing test product you will see why this is not an easy area to innovate in. The one thing you can give the medical industry is they have built an amazing system for maintaining the status quo.

Just look at Pharma (subset of medical)... if there is a more disreputable industry, I'm sure it's only a fraction of the size.

I'd love to see someone make a device that's sort of the opposite of this.

Compact in-ear selective audio filtering. For example, block all noises except human voice.

Or a simple noise attenuation mode that can be controlled from a smartphone.

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