The Need

Each year, over 72,000 severely hearing-impaired patients get a cochlear implant (“CI”) to hear again or to hear for the first time. Specialized audiologists adjust default hearing settings in the patient's implant after the surgery, using a subjective “Which sounds better?” process that takes many appointments, does not work for all patients, and yields sub-optimal hearing. A more effective and efficient means for tuning the patient's cochlear implant is desperately needed in order to provide better hearing for the patient and to increase the bandwidth of these specialized audiologists.

The Technology

Researchers at The Ohio State University, led by Dr. Jeffrey Skimore and Dr. Shuman He, have developed a patent-pending software solution that uses objective neural responses to create optimal hearing settings for any patient using considerbly less appointments comparned to conventional tuning means. Our lab-verified approach utilizes the patient's own CI device output to create individualized, optimal channel settings for improved hearing outcomes in just a couple of appointments. It is based on quantifying the health and functionality of an individual CI patient’s auditory nerve via noninvasive neural measurements.

Commercial Applications

• Cochlear Implant Clinics

Benefits/Advantages

• Initial study demonstrated a 102% improvement by average in sound detection abiity for six children
• Reduces the average of 10 post-surgical tuning appointments to less than half
• Ideal for tuning cochlear implants of non-responsive patients who cannot otherwise give feedback via the convention "Which sounds better?" tunning process
• Reduction in audiologists' time due to less tuning appointments allows CI clinic to perform more surgeries thereby increasing the clinic's annual revenue significantly