A vision for human bionics… a passion for a better world

Helping children and adults to access and benefit from the bionic ear and now, other life-changing medical bionic technologies are my life’s focus.

At Hear and Say, which I founded some 30 years ago, I have seen literally thousands of families experience the joy of their child ‘switched on’ to the bionic ear. A new world opens up from that day forward. The profoundly deaf learn to listen, speak and read, they enjoy a normal school life and, they go on to forge successful careers.

As Professor Clarke said, ‘the first ever ‘switch-on’ was also the very first time the human brain, human consciousness and a replaced human function were linked’.

The bionic ear, the world’s first moon-shot discovery in human bionics, opened the gate to a tsunami of potential new discoveries. It was slow at first, but there is no doubt the tide has turned. The wave of lifechanging bionic devices, implants and treatments is building and with it my goal to transform lives.

Human bionics bring the prospect of fuller participation for millions of people with previously untreatable conditions.

I see an image of the dark eyes of a sturdy toddler gazing back at me. In a twist of fate, a diagnosis of Usher syndrome for this youngster, now well into manhood, would see rapid loss of his sight. It was bleak news indeed, and yet I am struck by a level of optimism made possible only by the many breakthroughs in human bionics I see unfolding.

Now, more than ever before, we can envisage new bionic pathways back to optimal health and wellbeing.

Professor Graeme Clark’s multi-channel bionic ear was first implanted in a child with profound hearing loss in 1987. It was in anticipation of the possibilities for auditory brain access which this Australian innovation could bring for children born severely or profoundly deaf that I founded Hear and Say.

More recently, this interface between humans and bionic devices has expanded to cover not only the ear, but also many other areas of the body, vastly increasing the potential for bionics devices to treat previously untreatable medical conditions. Human bionics now has the potential to not only transform the lives of people with organ problems, brain disease, blindness, limb amputation, paralysis or other disorders, but also to become a high-growth, science-based industry for Australia.