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Ingeborg J. Hochmair-Desoyer | |
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Born | 1953 Vienna, Austria |
Occupation | MED-EL |
Spouse | Erwin Hochmair |
Awards | Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award (2013) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Electrical engineering |
Institutions | MED-EL |
Ingeborg J. Hochmair-Desoyer (born 1953) is an Austrian electrical engineer and the CEO and CTO of hearing implant company MED-EL. [1] Dr Hochmair and her husband Prof. Erwin Hochmair co-created the first micro-electronic multi-channel cochlear implant in the world. [2] She received the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for her contributions towards the development of the modern cochlear implant. [3] She also received the 2015 Russ Prize for bioengineering. [4]
In 1989, she co-founded the medical device company MED-EL. [4]
Ingeborg Hochmair was born in 1953 in Vienna, Austria. [5] Her mother was a physicist and her father was dean of the faculty of mechanical engineering at Vienna University of Technology. [6] Her grandmother was one of the first female chemical engineers in Austria.
She commenced her studies at Technical University of Vienna in electrical engineering in 1971, and in 1975, she became the first woman in Austria to receive a PhD in electrical engineering. [7] Her dissertation was on the "Technical realization and psychoacoustic evaluation of a system for multichannel chronic stimulation of the auditory nerve." [8]
From 1976 to 1986, she worked as assistant professor at the Institute of General Electrical Engineering and Electronics at Technical University of Vienna. She also worked at Stanford University's Institute for Electronics in Medicine as a Visiting Associate Professor in 1979. [2] In 1986, she moved from Vienna to Innsbruck, where she taught (first as Assistant Professor and later as associate professor) at the Institute of Applied Physics Electronics of University of Innsbruck until 1989. In 1998 she achieved Venia Legendi (Univ. Doz.) in miomedical engineering at the faculty of electrical engineering of Technical University of Vienna. [2]
In 1989, Hochmair co-founded the hearing implant company MED-EL, along with husband Erwin Hochmair. [9] She remains CEO and CTO of the company. [4]
Outside of MED-EL, Hochmair continues to support research in the field of science and technology. In 2012, an endowed professorship in microelectronics and implantable systems was introduced at the University of Innsbruck's Institute for Mechatronics, supported by Hochmair. [10] The University of Innsbruck also offers Ingeborg Hochmair Professorships, an endowed professorship aimed at supporting female researchers in science and technology. [11]
In 1975, Ingeborg and Erwin Hochmair started the cochlear implant development at Technical University of Vienna with the overall goal of enabling the user not only to hear sounds but also to provide some speech understanding. Together they developed the world's first microelectronic multi-channel cochlear implant. This implant included a long, flexible electrode, which could, for the first time, deliver electric signals to the auditory nerve along a large part of the cochlea, the snail-shaped inner ear. [12] Previous cochlear implant designs provided single-channel stimulation. The new multi-channel device was implanted in December 1977 in Vienna by Dr Kurt Burian. [13]
In 1979, a modified version of this first device allowed a woman to understand words and sentences without lip-reading in a quiet environment via a small, body-worn sound processor. This was a major milestone in the development of modern cochlear implants. [14] This device is the first to actually replace a human sense [15] Not only that, but it addresses hearing loss, which is number six on the list of the world's most significant disease burdens [16]
Through MED-EL, Hochmair has led many further advances in hearing implant research, including the introduction of a behind-the-ear audio processor in 1991, new sound coding strategies, and the development of single-unit audio processors. [17] A totally implantable cochlear implant is currently in development. [18]
Hochmair has over 40 patents to her name, all of which are for components of her cochlear implant. Many of the patents were updated or improved versions of older components for which she filed a new patent. A fairly comprehensive, but incomplete, list of her patents are as follows: [19]
Though she had a number of collaborators, [19] Hochmair contributed to all 36 of these patents in major ways, as the cochlear implant project was hers. As can be seen in the patent timeline above, she has continued to update and improve her device even this year. More than 400,000 people around the world were already using this device as of 2015. [20]
Ingeborg Hochmair has over 100 scientific publications in the field of Cochlear Implants, Medical Devices, Neuroprotheses, Audio & Speech Processing Technology. Among the most important ones are the following:
Hochmair is married to her husband and business partner, Erwin Hochmair. The couple have four children. [6]
An artificial cardiac pacemaker, commonly referred to as simply a pacemaker, is an implanted medical device that generates electrical pulses delivered by electrodes to one or more of the chambers of the heart. Each pulse causes the targeted chamber(s) to contract and pump blood, thus regulating the function of the electrical conduction system of the heart.
A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted neuroprosthesis that provides a person who has moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss with sound perception. With the help of therapy, cochlear implants may allow for improved speech understanding in both quiet and noisy environments. A CI bypasses acoustic hearing by direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Through everyday listening and auditory training, cochlear implants allow both children and adults to learn to interpret those signals as speech and sound.
Bone conduction is the conduction of sound to the inner ear primarily through the bones of the skull, allowing the hearer to perceive audio content even if the ear canal is blocked. Bone conduction transmission occurs constantly as sound waves vibrate bone, specifically the bones in the skull, although it is hard for the average individual to distinguish sound being conveyed through the bone as opposed to the sound being conveyed through the air via the ear canal. Intentional transmission of sound through bone can be used with individuals with normal hearing — as with bone-conduction headphones — or as a treatment option for certain types of hearing impairment. Bones are generally more effective at transmitting lower-frequency sounds compared to higher-frequency sounds.
Brain implants, often referred to as neural implants, are technological devices that connect directly to a biological subject's brain – usually placed on the surface of the brain, or attached to the brain's cortex. A common purpose of modern brain implants and the focus of much current research is establishing a biomedical prosthesis circumventing areas in the brain that have become dysfunctional after a stroke or other head injuries. This includes sensory substitution, e.g., in vision. Other brain implants are used in animal experiments simply to record brain activity for scientific reasons. Some brain implants involve creating interfaces between neural systems and computer chips. This work is part of a wider research field called brain–computer interfaces.
Neuroprosthetics is a discipline related to neuroscience and biomedical engineering concerned with developing neural prostheses. They are sometimes contrasted with a brain–computer interface, which connects the brain to a computer rather than a device meant to replace missing biological functionality.
Sonova Holding AG is an internationally active Swiss group of companies headquartered in Stäfa that specializes in hearing care. The Sonova group operates through its core business brands Phonak, Unitron, Advanced Bionics, AudioNova and Sennheiser (Licensed). It is one of the largest providers in the sector worldwide. The group and its brands hold 24% of the global hearing aid market in sales. As of 11 September 2022, Sonova was a component of the Swiss Market Index.
Graeme Milbourne Clark is an Australian Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne. Worked in ENT surgery, electronics and speech science contributed towards the development of the multiple-channel cochlear implant. His invention was later marketed by Cochlear Limited.
The Greenwood function correlates the position of the hair cells in the inner ear to the frequencies that stimulate their corresponding auditory neurons. Empirically derived in 1961 by Donald D. Greenwood, the relationship has shown to be constant throughout mammalian species when scaled to the appropriate cochlear spiral lengths and audible frequency ranges. Moreover, the Greenwood function provides the mathematical basis for cochlear implant surgical electrode array placement within the cochlea.
Cochlear is a medical device company that designs, manufactures, and supplies the Nucleus cochlear implant, the Hybrid electro-acoustic implant and the Baha bone conduction implant.
Electric acoustic stimulation (EAS) is the use of a hearing aid and a cochlear implant technology together in the same ear. EAS is intended for people with high-frequency hearing loss, who can hear low-pitched sounds but not high-pitched ones. The hearing aid acoustically amplifies low-frequency sounds, while the cochlear implant electrically stimulates the middle- and high-frequency sounds. The inner ear then processes the acoustic and electric stimuli simultaneously, to give the patient the perception of sound.
An auditory brainstem implant (ABI) is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf, due to retrocochlear hearing impairment. In Europe, ABIs have been used in children and adults, and in patients with neurofibromatosis type II.
A visual prosthesis, often referred to as a bionic eye, is an experimental visual device intended to restore functional vision in those with partial or total blindness. Many devices have been developed, usually modeled on the cochlear implant or bionic ear devices, a type of neural prosthesis in use since the mid-1980s. The idea of using electrical current to provide sight dates back to the 18th century, discussed by Benjamin Franklin, Tiberius Cavallo, and Charles LeRoy.
Geoffrey R. Ball (born 1964) is an American physiologist specializing in Biomechanics and the inventor of the VIBRANT SOUNDBRIDGE active middle ear implant – a medical device designed to treat his own hearing loss.
Neurostimulation is the purposeful modulation of the nervous system's activity using invasive or non-invasive means. Neurostimulation usually refers to the electromagnetic approaches to neuromodulation.
Erwin Hochmair is an Austrian electrical engineer whose research focuses in the fields of biomedical engineering and cochlear implant design. He has been a professor at the Institute of Experimental Physics, University of Innsbruck since 1986. He has authored and co-authored over 100 technical articles and holds about 50 patents. He is the co-founder and owner of the medical device company MED-EL.
Neuromodulation is "the alteration of nerve activity through targeted delivery of a stimulus, such as electrical stimulation or chemical agents, to specific neurological sites in the body". It is carried out to normalize – or modulate – nervous tissue function. Neuromodulation is an evolving therapy that can involve a range of electromagnetic stimuli such as a magnetic field (rTMS), an electric current, or a drug instilled directly in the subdural space. Emerging applications involve targeted introduction of genes or gene regulators and light (optogenetics), and by 2014, these had been at minimum demonstrated in mammalian models, or first-in-human data had been acquired. The most clinical experience has been with electrical stimulation.
Blake Shaw Wilson is an American research scientist best known for his role in developing signal processing strategies for the cochlear implant.
MED-EL is a global medical technology company specializing in hearing implants and devices. They develop and manufacture products including cochlear implants, middle ear implants and bone conduction systems.
Claude-Henri Chouard is a French surgeon. An otologist, he has been a full member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine since 1999. He was director of the AP-HP Laboratory of Auditory Prosthesis and director of the ENT Research Laboratory at Paris-Saint-Antoine University Hospital from 1967 to 2001. He was also head of the institution's ENT Department from 1978 to 1998. In 1982, he was elected a member of the International Collegium ORL-AS. He achieved worldwide recognition in the late 1970s thanks to the work completed by his Paris laboratory's multidisciplinary team on the multichannel cochlear implant. This implanted electronic hearing device was developed at Saint-Antoine and alleviates bilateral total deafness. When implanted early in young children, it can also help overcome the spoken language problems associated with deafness.
A chronic electrode implant is an electronic device implanted chronically into the brain or other electrically excitable tissue. It may record electrical impulses in the brain or may stimulate neurons with electrical impulses from an external source.
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