APP you kidding me?
My wife has hearing aids. She bought them just this past year. They cost $3500. They use an app. What for? Apparently so you can adjust the function according to the ambient sound conditions. Id est: increase noise cancelling for noisy environments, increase volume for quiet talkers, filter out nonsense from sale pitches ... oh no, they don't do that. Maybe you can use them to listen to music while you ignore the bore droning at you?
Anyway, the thing is the company that made them got bought by another company so the online support disappeared and the app no longer works. They function, but only as ordinary hearing aids not the ultra-complex and outrageously expensive units that they were made to be.
Hmm. Where have we heard this before? Oh yes, here: https://thisismylast.bearblog.dev/when-servers-go-away/
Only this isn't a case of a fancy toaster oven, these are 'medical devices'. How far could this go? Do you want your pacemaker dependent on some bluetooth connected application that suddenly goes off-line and then your arrhythmia is back? Maybe some random misalignment of your insulin pump sending you into a coma?
I'm not a big fan of government oversight (because it rarely works) but this all looks like another fine case of legislation lagging behind technological development. Obviously these devices have to be approved for use, but that approval is apparently dependent on existing software and does not take into account what happens when that support goes away. These things really need to be independent of external technology, but are they? "Still works somewhat" notwithstanding.