Ingeborg Hochmair On The Science Behind MED-ELs Implants

I feel very honored to have received an honorary doctorate of Uppsala University however, it is not just a reward for me, it is for the entire team that is working daily on improving things for the professionals concerned with the cochlear implant, and the users. Well, since we hired our first employees in 1990 science has always been at the heart of the company and translational science is what it is all about. You need translational science from the basic research enquiry to reimbursement of devices, and a lot in between. Yes, it allows us in an uncompromising way to find the best solutions and only our users, scientific, and clinical partners can be in our focus. Well, actually a lot has changed. We’ve come a long way from the early days where speech understanding only was in the focus.

01:27 - Now it is understanding in background noise, in difficult listening situations, it is enjoying music, and understanding tonal languages. It is better ease of use for the recipients and also for the professionals who have to deal with these therapies and devices. But there is still a lot to do because in the entire world, there are still many many children born deaf who do not receive this therapy before the age of 5 and there are lots of adults and older adults who have not received these devices because maybe they don’t have access to them. In the early days I think Sweden started in the 80s maybe in 1984 with the first patients coming to Vienna even together with Goran Bredberg. And then there was a consensus conference where Sweden asked researchers in the field how to start.

02:52 - After that they established a well thought-through cochlear implant program. Goran Bredberg also invented an electrode for ossified cochleas and later on Eva Kaltorp at Karolinska was a pioneer with bilateral implantation in very young children. And in Uppsala, Helge Rask-Andersen did a lot of great research in terms of variety of individual cochleas in terms of shape, size, and cochlea duct length. And in immunohistochemistry of the inner ear, microanatomy - looking into the detailed structures inside the inner ear and researching how not to harm these structures and working on the combination of electical and acoustical stimulation with higher degrees of hearing and structure preservation. Curiosity is as important as creativity in my opinion.

04:20 - To work in biomedical engineering, to find solutions with technology to challenges in quality of life for people is really the most interesting thing I could imagine. .