MED-EL Experts Explain Our Hearing Technology

Ever wondered how we make such reliable hearing implants? Or how bone conduction implants work? Or how hearings aids and cochlear implants can work together?

We asked three of the experts behind our technology to explain some of the common questions we get about our hearing implants. This is what they have to say.

Martin Zimmerling, Head of Implant Development

At MED-EL for more than 20 years, Martin and his team of engineers are responsible for everything inside our cochlear implants. And that includes safety capacitors. Not heard of them? These tiny electronic components are one of the heroes of our cochlear implant design, and help us create safe and reliable implants. How? Here’s Martin to explain:

“Safety capacitors take up nearly 50 percent of the space inside our cochlear implants. That sounds like a lot, but we are totally convinced that each of these safety capacitors is worth the space!”

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Christine Mühlöcker, Senior Product Manager

As the product manager for our BONEBRIDGE implant system, Christine is the expert in all things bone conduction—and the perfect person to explain how different bone conduction systems work.

Take it away, Christine:

“Bone conduction implants can have direct or indirect drive. Direct drive means that the implant itself generates vibrations and transfers them directly to the bone—it drives the bone directly.”

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Christine works with R&D teams, regulatory teams, and surgeons all over the world to make sure that BONEBRIDGE is as good as it can be. Here, she explains more about the reliability and future of this innovative hearing implant system.

“BONEBRIDGE is the world’s most advanced and established bone conduction implant. It has a decade of success with thousands of recipients worldwide.”

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Jennifer Robinson, Senior Product Manager and Audiologist

With over 25 years of experience in the field, Jen is one of the audiology experts at MED-EL headquarters. One topic particularly close to her heart is bimodal hearing. This is when you have a cochlear implant on one side, and a hearing aid on the other.

Jen explains more about how this works with MED-EL cochlear implants in this video.

“The closer your hearing devices are in processing and analyzing sound, the easier it is for your brain.”

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As an audiologist, a question Jen often gets asked is how to stream sound to an audio processor. Here she is to explain how this works with AudioStream, a cover that allows direct wireless streaming to SONNET series audio processors.