Chris Roberts, CEO of Cochlear - 'We have a unique opportunity'

Roberts recently spoke with BusinessWeek's Bruce Einhorn about what's in store for people who are losing their hearing. Edited excerpts follow.

What sort of advances can we expect in hearing technology?

It's still early days in terms of where the technology is going. We are going to see significant advances in the next three to five to 10 years. There's a lot happening.

So what is Cochlear trying to do?

There aren't many companies working in this space. We have understanding of hearing, of implant technology, we work with opinion leaders. [For many people with hearing loss,] you need things other than cochlear implants, you need cochlear implants plus.

What can you offer such people?

One is an electro-acoustic type of device. Cochlear implants work very well at high frequencies, but if you have a little bit of residual hearing, it's often at the lower frequencies that you have it. So it's been that people wait until they have lost hearing enough so that if you put an electrode in the cochlear, there's no downside.

What you would like to be able to do is to preserve what little bit of hearing they have. What we want to do is put an electrode in for the higher pitches -- typically for speech -- and acoustic stimulation for the lower frequencies. We need to work with the surgeons to develop electrodes that are atraumatic, so you can put the electrodes in the cochlea and preserve those delicate structures [of the hair cells in the inner ear].

How big is the potential market for these hybrid devices?
There are probably 50 to 60 times more patients who would be suitable for that device than for a cochlear implant.

Is this something that people will be able to get soon?
There's a trial going on at the University of Iowa [with] interesting results. There's real stuff going on. [The timing] is a couple of years off -- it's not months, but it's not decades. There aren't many people in the world working on this. I think we have a unique opportunity to really contribute to this space.

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Today, very few people with cochlear implants have them in both ears, but you've said that you see a trend toward having bilateral implants rather than unilateral ones. Why?

There are probably 50,000 to 100,000 people who go single-sided deaf a year. Thirty years ago, if you got a hearing aid, you got one. Now you get two. We listen with two ears for good reason. I don't know when it will happen, but it will happen that kids will get two. It might be five or 10 years before it's routine.

Cochlear implants are controversial among some people in the deaf community who are opposed to parents getting the devices for their young children. What do you say to them?

I think that their opposition is becoming less and less. And that's through the results. These children may be in deaf schools before being mainstreamed, and the teachers see these kids get transformed. You can't look at these results and say they're not real -- it's very hard to argue against technology. If you look at these kids [with hearing because of implants], you can't say you want to take that away from them.

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