Recent and future developments in cochlear implant technology: Review of the literature

Cochlear implant (CI) procedure and CIs have a long history filled with innovations, that have resulted in the high performing devices currently available. The development has been both rapid and remarkable and technological developments have yielded substantial gains in the possibility of communication, development of language skills, spoken words recognition and media enjoyment for the users. Multidisciplinary research among medical and engineering fields will continue to be critical in the development of new technology to increase the number candidates for this kind of hearing devices, to improve usability of the device and the results. The future of implantable auditory devices should place an emphasis on making devices accessible to patients with progressively more residual hearing, improving the safety profile and optimizing the electro-neural interface and neural stimulation, improving the usability of the device, finally leading to an improvement of the outcome and of the quality of life. The following are the main research topics and areas of development for cochlear implant technology, addressed in the paper: totally implanted devices, remote CI programming, minimizing surgical trauma, improved neural health and survival through targeted drug therapy and delivery, intraneural electrode placement and methods to enhance the neural-prosthesis interface.