Hearing News Watch

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL–The assets of Hear USA, one of the nation’s largest networks of hearing aid dispensing practices, will go up for bids in an auction to be       held in the Fort Lauderdale offices of the law firm Berger Singerman P.A. HearUSA, which is based in West Palm Beach, filed under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code on May

PARIS–Sanofi, a major global pharmaceutical company, announced June 16 a 2-year research collaboration with Audion Therapeutics to develop potential treatments for hearing loss through a regenerative medicine approach. Sanofi <www.sanofi.com>, which is based in Paris, and the Dutch company Audion will use technology that Dr. Albert Edge developed at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary’s Eaton-Peabody Laboratory in Boston. Edge, a co-founder

LIVONIA, MI—The International Hearing Society (IHS) has a new face in the nation’s capital. She is Alissa Parady, the organization’s recently named government affairs manager. Because she operates out of  Washington, Parady will be positioned to enhance IHS’s relations with DC-based consumer, industry, and government organizations. In announcing this addition to IHS’s government affairs program, Alan Lowell, BC-HIS, ACA, the

VANCOUVER, BC–The hearing aid market in China and India, now valued at over $1 billion, will nearly double by 2017, according to a new report by iData Research (www.idataresearch.net). The Canadian-based authority on the global medical device market includes both retail and wholesale sales in its figures. There is plenty of room for growth, says iData’s analyst manager, Douglas Fung,

SHEFFIELD, ENGLAND—It has long been popular folk wisdom that people who lose one of their senses early in life help compensate for it by developing another sense more acutely. For example, the large number of blind musicians is sometimes cited as evidence that lack of vision results in enhanced auditory sensibility and thereby promotes outstanding musical gifts. A recent study,

SALEM, OR—Lending a helping hand to people with hearing and vision problems has been a Lions Club International mission for decades. One way members of the service organization have done this is by collecting and donating used hearing aids and eyeglasses to people in need. However, in recent years, liability concerns have sometimes stood in their way. The Lions have

CHICAGO–Fred Cohen, an attorney who blogs regularly at hearinghealthmatters.com, has been selected by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care to receive its 2011 B.J. Anno Award of Excellence in Communication. Cohen, who writes the weekly column The Law and Hearing on this site, will be honored for his outstanding contribution to the field of correctional health care. He wrote

BOULDER, CO–A new bone-conduction implantable hearing device received market clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on June 1. Known as the Otomag Alpha 1, the system was developed by Boulder-based Sophono, Inc. (sophono.com), to treat conductive and mixed hearing loss, as well as single-sided deafness. Existing bone-conduction systems, such as those made by Oticon Medical and Cochlear,

BALTIMORE–The established treatment for sudden hearing loss has long been a course of oral steroids. However, a study headed by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and reported in the May 25 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) suggests that steroid injections may be equally effective (or ineffective) in restoring hearing in patients who experience this mysterious and traumatic condition.

CHAMBERSBURG, PA–Global DataConsultants (www.globaldataconsultants.com) predicts that the global market for hearing aids will reach $10 billion by 2017. That represents a 50% increase from its $6.6 billion estimate of the 2010 market. The company, whose complete report, Hearing Aid Devices: Global Pipeline Analysis, Opportunity Assessment and Market Forecasts to 2017, is available for purchase, expects that the rapid increase in