Case Study: Eriksholm Research Centre decodes listening effort and fatigue with Empatica EmbracePlus

Eriksholm Research Centre predicts listening fatigue with EmbracePlus and 3 physiological signals

The Eriksholm Research Centre, a leading audiological research organization, faced a challenge in objectively measuring the real-world cognitive burden of hearing loss—such as listening effort, stress, and fatigue—which traditional clinical assessments could not capture. To study this, they partnered with Empatica and deployed the EmbracePlus wearable to collect continuous physiological data from hearing aid users in their daily lives.

Empatica's solution provided an always-on wearable that required minimal user intervention, ensuring high compliance from older participants. By integrating EmbracePlus data on heart rate, skin temperature, and electrodermal activity with acoustic context and self-reports, Eriksholm identified objective biomarkers that could predict listening effort and fatigue. These insights enable the development of personalized hearing care and establish a framework for using digital biomarkers to quantify the health benefits of hearing loss interventions.

Eriksholm Research Centre