by David M. Sykes, Vice Chair, The Quiet Coalition
I’ve been watching Dr. Charles Liberman’s company, Frequency Therapeutics, for several years. He’s the physician-researcher who runs Harvard’s Lauer Tinnitus Research Center in Boston and who has published papers starting in 2009 about “hidden hearing loss,” papers that broke open the Congressional log-jam that prevented significant funding going into hearing disorders. His company has raised an eye-popping $228 million in venture capital–that’s a LOT for an early-stage company–and now they’ve gotten approval from the Food and Drug Administration to fast-track trials of their first product.
But Frequency Therapeutics isn’t the only company in this space. I recently saw information at an investor conference showing that another half dozen companies have also raised significant amounts of venture capital for hearing-disorder treatments. Collectively, they’ve raised over a quarter of a billion dollars! That’s extraordinary progress for a long overlooked sector where nothing seemed to happen for decades and where the only treatment option for decades were extraordinarily expensive hearing aids from a handful of powerful companies charging inflated prices no one could afford.
Now there’s an active market and venture capitalists are diving in! That is a real sign of progress!
Thanks are due to the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology that in 2016 published a report on the noise-induced hearing loss market, and to the National Academy of Medicine report on hearing loss in America that issued a few months later. Those two reports also led to the bi-partisan Warren-Grassley OTC Hearing Aid Act that President Trump signed into law in 2018 and that goes in to effect in January 2020. That act, in turn, has created a surge of investment in personal sound amplification products, or PSAPs, which are high-tech ‘hearing aids’ you’ll soon be able to buy from your local drug store for 1/10th the price of conventional hearing aids.
Change is here!
