MED-EL celebrates 5 years of ‘life changing’ ADHEAR technology for people with hearing loss
November 15, 2022 – (Innsbruck, Austria): MED-EL, a leading provider of hearing solutions, and families around the world are celebrating five years of a hearing loss technology that has changed the lives for thousands of people living with hearing loss. The ADHEAR, which was launched in 2017, is a next generation bone conduction hearing system that provides people with a non-surgical solution for conductive hearing loss.
William, aged 16, from the UK was one of the first people worldwide to receive the device, and continues to use it every day. “ADHEAR has helped me at school; I can interact with the lessons now and the teachers I can hear more clearly. It’s also helped my confidence because I can now talk to people and have the confidence to interact with others without thinking maybe I can’t hear them and maybe they’ll think that I’m rude.”
William’s mother, Lorraine, added, “It’s part of William now. We’d be lost without the device!”.
Maria Francesca, whose 5-year-old son Flavio uses an ADHEAR, commented “We had so much joy in seeing the surprised gaze of Flavio when he heard the chirping of birds for the first time and discovered that the trampled leaves make noise.”
ADHEAR is ideal for people of any age who live with conductive hearing loss, and are unsuitable for, or do not want to undergo, bone conduction implant surgery. The system has two external components: an adhesive adaptor that sits on the skin behind the ear and an audio processor. The audio processor picks up sound waves, converts them into vibrations and transmits them onto the bone via the advanced adhesive adaptor. The bone then transfers the vibrations through the skull to the inner ear where they are processed as normal sound.
Bone conduction uses the skull bone to transmit sound waves directly to the inner ear and may be an appropriate option for people who have hearing loss due to problems with the ear canal, eardrum, or middle ear bones. For example, 1 in every 6,000-12,000 people live with Microtia and Atresia, which leads to malformations of the outer ear. A bone conduction solution like ADHEAR can make a positive difference to people living with such as conditions.
“MED-EL has always been at the forefront of innovative hearing loss technology and there was a real need for a pressure-less, non-surgical bone conduction solution,” said Dr Ingeborg Hochmair, CEO of MED-EL. “When we launched ADHEAR five years ago it opened up a whole new world of sound to people with conductive hearing loss, and today it continues to enable us to help more people to overcome hearing loss as a barrier to communication.”
About MED-EL
MED-EL Medical Electronics, a leader in implantable hearing solutions, is driven by a mission to overcome hearing loss as a barrier to communication. The Austrian-based, privately owned business was co-founded by industry pioneers Ingeborg and Erwin Hochmair, whose ground-breaking research led to the development of the world’s first micro-electronic multi-channel cochlear implant (CI), which was successfully implanted in 1977 and was the basis for what is known as the modern CI today. This laid the foundation for the successful growth of the company in 1990, when they hired their first employees. To date, MED-EL has grown to more than 2,300 employees from around 80 nations and 30 locations worldwide.
The company offers the widest range of implantable and non-implantable solutions to treat all types of hearing loss, enabling people in 134 countries enjoy the gift of hearing with the help of a MED-EL device. MED-EL’s hearing solutions include cochlear and middle ear implant systems, a combined Electric Acoustic Stimulation hearing implant system, auditory brainstem implants as well as surgical and non-surgical bone conduction devices. www.medel.com
CEO
Doz. DI Dr DDr med. h.c. Ingeborg Hochmair
Press contact
PR & Corporate Communications
MED-EL Medical Electronics
Fürstenweg 77a
6020 Innsbruck
Austria
T: +43 5 7788-1029
E: press@medel.com
www.medel.com
