- The disease
- Single-sided deafness (SSD) refers to a complete or near-complete loss of hearing in one ear while the other ear retains functional hearing. Conductive hearing loss (CHL) occurs when sound is not efficiently transmitted through the outer or middle ear to the inner ear, often due to structural problems such as ear canal obstruction, chronic middle ear disease, or absent/malformed ear structures. Both conditions can significantly affect speech understanding in noisy environments and the ability to localise the direction of sounds. Standard acoustic hearing aids are not always suitable for these patients because they require a functioning ear canal or middle ear.
- What the asset is trying to do
- The Baha 6 Max is a bone-anchored hearing system, a category of surgically implanted device that bypasses a non-functioning outer or middle ear by transmitting sound vibrations directly through the skull bone to the functioning cochlea (inner ear). A small titanium implant is placed in the bone behind the ear; an external sound processor attaches to this implant and converts incoming sound into vibrations. In SSD, the device routes sound from the deaf side through bone to the hearing cochlea on the opposite side. This differs from conventional hearing aids, which amplify sound through the air and ear canal, and from cochlear implants, which electrically stimulate the auditory nerve directly.
- Efficacy benchmarks in this setting
- For single-sided deafness, bone-anchored hearing systems as a device class have been evaluated against no treatment and conventional contralateral routing of signal (CROS) hearing aids in published literature. The Baha system (an earlier generation) received FDA approval for SSD in adults in 2001 (per FDA device approval records). Specific speech recognition and sound localisation outcomes for approved bone-anchored devices in SSD and CHL have been reported across multiple studies, but the figures vary by study design, patient population, and outcome measure; any early-phase or post-market figures for the Baha 6 Max specifically are not statistically comparable to those aggregate published benchmarks. .
- Commercial context
- The Baha 6 Max is a commercially approved product of Cochlear Limited (ASX: COH), not a pipeline asset. Cochlear Limited disclosed a reduction to its FY26 earnings guidance in a trading update released on 21 April 2026 (per ASX announcement, COH, 2026-04-21). The Baha portfolio sits alongside Cochlear's other approved hearing implant lines, including the Nucleus cochlear implant series and the Osia system; its relative contribution to group revenue is . Bone-anchored hearing systems as a device class compete with other surgically implanted and non-surgical solutions for SSD and CHL, including active transcutaneous bone conduction devices and CROS/BiCROS hearing aids from multiple manufacturers; specific approved competitor products and market share data are .