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November 4, 2002

Oticon wins prestigious European IST Prize

From: Canada NewsWire (press release), CA
Nov. 4, 2002

MISSISSAUGA, ON, Nov. 4 /CNW/ - Oticon A/S, the Danish manufacturer of
hearing aids, was selected as one of this year's twenty European Information
Society Technology Prize Winners by the European IST Prize evaluation group.
The European IST Prize is the most distinguished award for groundbreaking
products that represent the best of European innovation in information society
technologies (IST). Over 437 innovative companies and institutions from 27
countries competed for this year's prize.

As the only Danish winner, Oticon's digital hearing aid Adapto was chosen
as one of the 20 best applicants in terms of the criteria: technical
excellence, innovative content, potential market value and capacity to
generate new jobs. The Adapto product family, is based on major innovations
and designed to make hearing for hearing aid users as close to natural hearing
as possible.
Adapto's functionality is inspired by the brain's way of processing sound
and features a new approach in detecting and prioritizing human voices even in
noisy surroundings. It uses a unique VoiceFinder(TM) to constantly screen the
hearing aid user's listening environment to detect the human voice.
Immediately after recognition, Adapto activates a Speech mode that processes
these signals for maximum understanding. When no speech is present, Adapto
automatically goes into a Comfort mode tuning out noise and irrelevant sounds
and protecting the user from the fatigue that constant "unfiltered" sounds
inflict.

About Oticon
As one of the world's leading manufacturers of hearing instruments,
Oticon has always maintained a leading position in the research and
development of hearing care solutions and as a result millions of people in
more than 100 countries rely on Oticon hearing instruments every day. In 2000
William Demant Holding, the parent company of Oticon was ranked by Forbes
Global as one of its top 20 of the best 300 small companies in the world. For
more information on Oticon and its products please visit www.oticon.ca .

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For further information: please contact: Susan Lucas, Marketing Manager
- Oticon Canada, (905) 677-3231, email: sl@oticon.ca

© 2002 Canada NewsWire Ltd.