Austrian medical equipment company MED-EL (Medical Electronics) has received permission from Indian authorities to introduce Bonebridge, a new technology that helps the hearing impaired to hear the full range of sounds.

“We have received the permission and we are awaiting import permits. We expect to get it to India in the next few weeks,” Tejinder Singh, Managing Director of MED-EL India, said.

Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, he said the Bonebridge consisted of two components – an implant under the skin behind the ear and an audio processor which received the sound waves.

“Sound signals pass through the skin and are actively conducted by the implant to the bone and the inner ear. The new technology helps people with sound conduction hearing impairment that cannot be treated with conventional hearing aids,” Ingeborg Hochmair, Managing Director of MED-EL, said.

She was here in connection with the ninth Asia Pacific symposium on cochlear implants and related sciences.

Hochmair received the Lasker Award in September for development of the modern cochlear implant.

She shared the award, considered to be the American equivalent of the Nobel Prize, with Frame M. Clark of the Melbourne University and Blake S. Wilson of the US-based Duke University.

She along with Erwin Hochmair developed the world’s first microelectronic-multichannel cochlear implant as early as in 1977.

The company has 30 subsidiaries across the world, with 1,500 employees working for it.

kurmanath.kanchi@thehindu.co.in

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