Cochlear's next big breakthrough: 24/7 hearing for the profoundly deaf
New technologies and new ways of doing things in healthcare are not limited to start-ups.
When Melbourne surgeon Graeme Clark implanted the first hearing device in a patient with profound hearing loss 40 years ago, it was a breakthrough. The device was the forerunner to the Cochlear implant, and Cochlear – now a $10.7 billion ASX darling – was launched four years later in 1982.
Before Clark's landmark operation at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne, "it was not understood that you could restore hearing" in patients with profound hearing loss, surgeon Robert Briggs says. Now Cochlear and Briggs believe they are ready for the next breakthrough: a fully implantable Cochlear.
The original – still current – generation of the Cochlear implant requires an external microphone, battery and sound processor, which sit behind the ear and have to be removed for showering, swimming or sleeping. When that happens, patients go back to struggling to hear at all.
The fully implantable device fits a microphone, battery and sound processor into a single housing that is implanted inside the patient's skull to provide 24-hour hearing.
The long-term project, part of Cochlear's annual R&D; spend of more than $160 million, is entering its early clinical trial.
If successful, it will help to cement Cochlear's continuing leadership of the hearing implant market at a time when new challengers, such as high-end audio equipment manufacturer Bose, are seeking to enter the market.
'Body noises'
The first generation of the fully implantable hearing device was trialled in three patients in 2005 and 2006. While those patients still use the trial devices, results were mixed. "Body noises" interfered with the signal from the internal mic, says Briggs, who is leading the trial with Robert Cowan of the HEARing Cooperative Research Centre.
The latest generation has vastly improved noise cancellation for those pesky body noises and microchip capacity for sound processing. "There's an increased complexity to it which is quite remarkable," Briggs says.
He implanted the first of these second-generation fully implantable Cochlears in a patient in September, tuned up the 22 electrodes and switched on the device on October 8. "The initial switch-on seems to be very, very promising," he says.
The researchers have to recruit 10 more patients and trial the devices over two years before reaching a conclusion on the device. The test will be how well the users can hear in different circumstances, such as conversing in a crowded room, and how often they will have to augment the implantable device with the optional external sound processor to be able to hear comfortably.
