Press & Speaking
The first human to hear through a fully implanted cochlear implant.
Michael Seufer is Patient CI3 in Envoy Medical’s Acclaim clinical trial and the first human to hear through a fully implanted cochlear implant: no external processor, no magnet, no battery pack. Dr. Colin Driscoll implanted the device at Mayo Clinic on November 4, 2022. It was activated at Mayo on December 5.
Through the eight-hour activation session, Michael heard only chaotic, robotic distortion. He left crushed and turned the implant off in the parking garage. The next morning, driving home to Columbus, he turned it back on, pulled the hearing aid from his non-implanted ear, and sang along to his playlist, reading the lyrics, riding the bass line. He had built himself a no-fallback rehab protocol, the kind a neuropsychologist designs in a lab, and ran it on himself at seventy miles an hour.
His own voice broke through first, within thirty minutes. Four hours in, his own voice was free of the screech entirely; every other sound still carried distortion, but was coming through more clearly, bit by bit. Three to four days later, every voice and every sound was clear, and the screech never returned. A UX designer with two decades of experience, he now speaks about hearing loss, medical innovation, and being first.
The Record
The verifiable facts, for citation.
You played a critically important role in the refinement of the device, it could not have been done without you.
The Envoy Medical Acclaim is an investigational device, limited by federal law to investigational use.
Speaking Topics
Three talks, drawn from one first-in-human account.
The Drive Home
Thirty minutes into a fourteen-hour drive, my own voice broke through the distortion first. How I taught my brain to hear, one song at a time.
The One Who Ran It Alone
Why using the implant with no hearing aid made me the patient who could refine the device for everyone after me.
Forty Years of Compensation
A lifetime decoding sound I shouldn't have been able to parse, and what UX taught me about the accessibility gaps no one sees.
Book Michael
For press inquiries and speaking engagements.
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