Devices for hearing more, living better

Listening to its users helps Nurotron in their bid to achieve the ideal marriage of form and function, as Hu Yuechun and Xu Wei report.

Li Chu carefully checks each part of a design drawing delivered to his office from his company's US research center.

The general manager of the Zhejiang Nurotron Biotechnology Co Ltd is well aware that a design, no matter how perfect it might be, has to suit the user needs of Chinese people.

"Some of the design ideas cannot be realized at the moment in China, while some of the design may not fit user habits," he said as he checked each detail of the design.

A high-tech enterprise dedicated to becoming the world's leading supplier of neural electronic products, Nurotron has a total of more than 50 patents, including close to 30 inventions and patents for utility models. The company is mainly engaged in developing and manufacturing multi-channel cochlear implant devices.

The best of its research and development capacity can be displayed in a cochlear implant device with the largest part as big as a coin.

Nurotron has devoted its best research capacity in the past eight years to ensure that the devices are as small as possible, so that the surgical invasive can be reduced to a minimum. Meanwhile, the marrying of form and function is another priority for the research team.

"We want to be the best in the world from the very beginning, rather than just producing some copycat products," he said.

Top team of scientists

Li realized that the best cochlear implant devices could only be made by absorbing the technological achievements that had already been accumulated.

"We want to make the world's best products together with the top scientists in the world," he said.

He found that close to 40 percent of researchers and engineers at top hearing research institutes and cochlear producers in the United States were Chinese or Chinese-Americans.

That accounts for Nurotron's decision to set up its research and development center in California, as the company sought to bring on board the Chinese-American scientists from the best research institutes.

Li, the CEO of the company who also had overseas learning experience and modern management expertise, also joined the researchers at the research center.

He recalled one time he and his colleagues were lying inside their sleeping bags in Nurotron's research center in California waiting for some test results. At that time he did not expect that the made-in-China cochlear implant devices would eventually be used by more than 2,000 hearing impaired people in China.

Official statistics show that in 2006, China had more than 27.8 million hearing impaired people, more than 10 percent of whom suffered from severe hearing disabilities. Many of them would recover some hearing with the aid of a cochlear implant device. However, before Nurotron's products came on the market, China had to rely on expensive imported products that were beyond the reach of most who would benefit from them.

The company's research team includes Fu Qianjie, who is the president of the expert committee of Nurotron and the director of the Center for Auditory Neuroscience Division at the House Ear Institute in the US. Fu has great expertise in the research of cochlear implants and psychoacoustics and auditory rehabilitation software.

Another important member of the company's research team is Zeng Fangang, who is director of the Otolaryngology, Anatomy and Neurobiology department at the University of California, Irvine, and a lifetime professor of four departments at the university.

Both Fu and Zeng held multiple patents for cochlear implant devices, but could not find appropriate funding programs to put them into production.

Their meeting with Li Fangping, a former real estate developer who's now the company's chairman and Li Chu's father, made it possible for the production of a made-in-China cochlear implant device.

The research and development for the cochlear implant devices started in 2006, and the company's first device was produced in 2008. The China Food and Drug Administration approved the marketing of the cochlear implant products made by the company in 2011, and the company became the fourth company that can produce cochlear implant devices on a large scale in the world.

While Nurotron's cochlear implant devices have similar technological indexes compared with imported products, the company's products are only one-third the price.

In 2013, the company was named one of the top 100 most innovative companies in the world by Red Herring, a US-based media company.

Close to 2,000 people with hearing disabilities wear devices produced by Nurotron as of 2014. Meanwhile, in that year, a hearing impaired person in Columbia became the first person outside China to use a device made by Nurotron.

Designed for users

Rehabilitation software called "Angel Sound" is provided to users of the company's cochlear products. "Angel Sound" is a PC-based interactive listening rehabilitation program developed by TigerSpeech Technology and freely distributed by the Emily Shannon Fu Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring Emily Fu, the daughter of Fu Qianjie. "Angel Sound" is the world's top interactive listening rehabilitation software designed exclusively for the users of cochlear implant devices to improve their hearing abilities.

Nurotron is the sole entity authorized to use the program, although it has been available to all deaf people for free since September, 2012.

For many users of cochlear implant devices, hearing sounds by means of the stimulation of an electric current is a brand new experience. For some patients, it is not easy to learn to hear the sound signals through the electronic cochlear devices. Normally it takes some time training with the help of language therapists for users to adapt to the "electronic sounds".

The "Angel Sound" program has been well-received by most users, with many patients saying they like the design of the program and praising it for the help it provides in the rehabilitation process.

For Nurotron, whether the products have been well-received by users is the most important criteria in determining whether a decision was good or not. That is why the company paid the best design team in the United States to redesign the headset for its cochlear implant devices.

"We used to believe that the core technology of the cochlear implants was the internal implants and that was more than enough. Later we found that, for the users, the external part is the most important part as that is what is visible to the world on a daily basis. We then started to concentrate on how to make wearing the device more relaxing and more fun for the users," said Li Chu.

Li said Nurotron has established an information platform that is open to users 24 hours a day, and it helps them to gather feedback from users of the company's devices.

"Now we can tailor our products based on the different ear shapes of our users," he said.

For users of a Nurotron cochlear implant device, it is quite "surprising" to find the device is designed with entertainment functions, including radio and ports that can be connected with music players. Thanks to Nurotron's research on the four tones of Mandarin, Nurotron devices are more adept at allowing users to listen to music than products by other makers.

"Our product can display the beauty of rhythms to users." Li said.

Quite different from the English language, the Chinese language has four tones that differentiate the pronunciation of different words. To enable Chinese users of Nurotron's cochlear implant devices to distinguish the four tones, Nurotron has started to design their products based on the pronunciation of Chinese words.

The company has devoted more than 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) to its R&D efforts annually for the past eight years.

Turning good designs into reality

Along with its strong R&D capability, Li said the production process is equally important for Nurotron.

"We realized why the top companies in the world have a special design department for manufacturing and assembly," Li said. "Time and again we have to revise the design by the research team in the US so it fits the production process."

For instance, the producer of the shell of the external part for Nurotron is an original equipment manufacturer for a Japanese cellphone company. Yet even for a producer with such production capacity, the blueprints sent by the US research team still defied the production capabilities of the enterprise, especially in terms of the details.

There have also been times when the design does not meet the requirement of the products. The cable of the microphone, for instance, was designed by US designers in accordance with the headphones of Samsung and Apple products, which means they could withstand more than 3,000 twists. However, the cables for the microphones of the cochlear implant products must withstand more than 30,000 twists.

"We are now listening to the experiences of some producers of hearing aids in the country," Li said.

"We believe that the process of accepting challenges from outside and correcting our shortcomings can enable us to deliver the best cochlear implants devices to hearing impaired people in China," he added.

Contact the writers at huyuechun @chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/26/2015 page15)