The JUMP-1 scheme: An example of industry providing academia with something other than money

Oticon's fully digital hearing aid provides attractive possibilities for so me areas of hearing aid research, far beyond Oticon's capacity to exploit t hem. The commercial version of this aid and its accompanying programming so ftware provides only restricted user access to the signal processing variab les in the hardware. Special versions of the hardware and software have the refore been developed for research use. This package has been offered to a number of academic research groups, for them to use in their own research ( i.e. not dictated by Oticon). This paper discusses the framework chosen for the scheme, and its advantages and disadvantages for both Oticon and recip ient research groups. The aim is to show that such an open approach is adva ntageous to both parties and to the wider community of hearing aid research , and that in some cases the best support industry can give to academia is not economic but material.