Here’s a couple of official links to the Cochlear and Resound “Smart Hearing Alliance.”
I guess right now, they’re focused on just the MFi/Direct-to-iPhone/Android bimodal streaming and bimodal streaming with their streaming products and not yet the benefits offered by having the hearing aid and cochlear implant “speak” to each other for sound-in-noise, etc.:
Both pages discuss the benefits of bimodal hearing from the simple standpoint of having two devices. Then they discuss the Smart Hearing Alliance as what allows Resound and Cochlear to work together.
But I think having noise reduction be implemented in a bimodal way would be the next step. It’s interesting that ForwardFocus by Cochlear and Ultra Focus by Resound sound very similar in terms of being manually activated to focus on sound in front of you.
Phonak and Advanced Bionics already do this with their product line.
I hope Cochlear and Resound’s Alliance can eventually make it so that features such as Resound’s All Access directionality (works with both hearing aids to detect which side has a better signal-to-noise ratio) could be used together. Right now, the streaming is what works together. Phonak and Advanced Bionics (another implant company) do work together in noisy situations, etc. But maybe there’s more power here since they are owned by the same company as well (Sonova). But I could see Cochlear and Resound using their Alliance to make this possible regardless in the future.
Maybe the next generation will support this. Keep in mind that Cochlear has owned the BAHA brand for a few years, so the Resound and Cochlear Alliance helps both those with cochlear implants as well as BAHA devices.