We bring the power of Sonova innovation to people with the most significant hearing loss.
Sonovaʼs Cochlear Implants business operates under the Advanced Bionics brand, which in 2023 celebrated 30 years at the frontier of hearing care, helping people with severe and profound hearing loss. A cochlear implant treats the most severe forms of hearing loss by bypassing the middle ear and stimulating the hearing nerve directly with an electrical signal. Sounds in the environment are converted into this signal by a sound processor worn behind the ear. This means that, thanks to close R&D cooperation between Advanced Bionics and Phonak, every new Phonak innovation in sound processing, speech enhancement, and connectivity has the potential to be applied to the Advanced Bionics cochlear implant.
We firmly believe that good hearing should be achievable for all people, regardless of the severity of their hearing loss, and that they should be able to control and fine-tune their hearing experience to their own preferences or have it self-adjust automatically. For severe and profound hearing loss, a cochlear implant may be the only technology that can functionally restore hearing; using one should be as straightforward and self-directed as possible.
The worldwide cochlear implant market has significant growth potential, with a large difference between the number of people who could benefit from the technology and those who use it today. Our strategy to bridge that gap is based on accelerating our innovation, maintaining strong focus on enhancing the experience of the people who choose our solutions and the professionals who serve them, connecting with potential candidates for our solutions, achieving commercial excellence through data and technology-supported process improvements, and strengthening the foundations of our business.
We are optimizing our production and distribution footprint to enable growth, improve supply chain security, and reduce costs. This initiative includes expanding our manufacturing capacity in Mexicali, Mexico over the course of the coming years. We continue to apply the Sonova X process improvement mindset and tools in our daily business. As a result, we have seen substantial reduction in cost-of-goods, improved referral rates, and increased selection as provider of choice. We have also achieved best-in-industry implant and external reliability rates, and the improved oversight of our product development cycle has brought increased efficiency and cost savings. This sharp focus on continuous and structural improvement enables us to further improve our profit margin, securing the best returns from ongoing investment into the business.
Our powerful Marvel CI technology platform, with Phonakʼs unique Made For All™ universal Bluetooth® connectivity, continues to open up new avenues for enhanced patient experience: one of the most important is Remote Programming. Receiving a cochlear implant can be life-transforming for people of all ages with severe or profound hearing loss, but adoption of the technology can be restricted by limited access to care. A drive of three hours for a routine audiology appointment is hardly unusual, and the average adult cochlear implant recipient has at least six such appointments in the year after the implant is activated; pediatric patients have even more. Recipients are spending valuable time commuting to the center. Meanwhile, audiologists are spending time in the clinic trying to simulate the recipientʼs typical home listening conditions in order to adjust the processor.
Our new Remote Support app does not just check on the hardwareʼs status – it actually allows recipients to have full in-depth remote consultations with their audiologist using their smartphone. A video chat function brings the recipient and the audiologist together over a secure connection. At the same time, cloud-based software lets the audiologist remotely and directly adjust the settings of the Marvel CI sound processors and compatible Phonak hearing aid – all in real time, as the recipient and audiologist converse. Advanced Bionics is the first to offer true remote programming: with it, the telehealth concept is becoming a reality for our recipients. In the future, remote assessment, rehabilitation tools, and an array of recipient-controlled apps to monitor and improve performance will offer even greater self sufficiency.
Sonova is unique in the healthcare industry in that it not only shares technological innovation and market insights among its businesses, but also shares the consumers it addresses. Every person we serve is someone who cares about good hearing, whether itʼs an audiophile, a person with hearing loss, or a hearing care professional. So when their hearing experience changes, it makes sense to let people know how other parts of the Sonova Group can address that change with appropriate solutions.
For Advanced Bionics, the obvious point of referral is when a personʼs hearing loss goes beyond what even high-power hearing aids can address. It can be a difficult time for the consumer, because what has been a long-familiar solution now has to give way to something new and unknown. We have therefore set up a national system in the US, the Advanced Bionics Cochlear Implant Network, to work with audiologists to identify users of Phonak hearing aids who have reached the stage of hearing loss where a cochlear implant is the better solution. A similar initiative in Germany, now being extended throughout Europe, has been running for eleven years with great success. As of this year, some 35% of new Advanced Bionics recipients in Germany were referred by audiologists who dispense Phonak hearing aids or by Sonovaʼs own Audiological Care business.