Cochlear Implant - Manufacturers

Manufacturers

Currently (as of 2007), the three cochlear implant devices approved for use in the U.S. are manufactured by Cochlear Limited (Australia), Advanced Bionics (USA, a division of Sonova) and MED-EL (Austria). In Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America, an additional device manufactured by Neurelec, of France, is available. Each manufacturer has adapted some of the successful innovations of the other companies to its own devices. There is no clear-cut consensus that any one of these implants is superior to the others. Users of all four different right or left side.

Since the devices have a similar range of outcomes, other criteria are often considered when choosing a cochlear implant: FM system compatibility, usability of external components, cosmetic factors, battery life, reliability of the internal and external components, MRI compatibility, mapping strategies, customer service from the manufacturer, the familiarity of the user's surgeon and audiologist with the particular device, and anatomical concerns.

There have been news reports of other organizations working to develop cochlear implants in India by a branch of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (which is expected to reach the clinical trial stage around September 2012) and in South Korea by the Seoul National University Hospital.