BusinessWeek on Cochlear Implants

Link: Listen: The Sound Of Hope.

Only 17,000 people worldwide had cochlear devices implanted last year, yet in the U.S. alone, some 900,000 people are believed to be deaf or near-deaf.

With numbers like these, why investors are afraid of the hearing impairment market is beyond me (well, not quite beyond me: see slide 5 in my presentation at the MedAlley conference). And this is just those who are deaf and near-deaf. The number of people who require hearing aids but don't have one is an order of magnitude larger.