An implantable hearing aid

Michael Chorost describes a fully implantable hear­ing aid which is in the stage of clin­i­cal tri­als in the US. The com­pany which cre­ated the device, Oto­log­ics, is plan­ning to make a cochlear implant with this tech­nique too. Sure this is in the early stages of devel­op­ment and many prob­lems need to be resolved, but it would be won­der­ful to have a fully implantable device, not hav­ing to worry about it get­ting wet or being eaten by the dog, to be able to sleep and swim with it (how­ever, I think that some of us would have pre­ferred to turn them­selves off for the night ;-) ). One of the prob­lems with the design of the device is that the micro­phone is under the skin. I won­der if the micro­phone could be placed in the ear, just like with nat­ural hearing.