Otometrics comprises a family of companies in Europe and North America with roots going back fifty years. At some point, each of these companies was no more than a person with an idea for improving hearing and balance healthcare. Their passion and dedication turned ideas into solutions and made a difference in people’s lives.

The stories behind the names are the common heritage of the Otometrics family. Stories that remind us of what we share – a collective history, a sense of belonging, and a mutual commitment toward what Poul Madsen, one of our founding fathers, called “helping the world to better hearing”.

One company – one unified family

Each of the individual companies that makes up Otometrics brings its own special qualities to our organization.

And each of these companies has been involved in a number of “firsts” in the fields of audiology, otology and balance assessment.

The 1950s – how it all began

Epoch-making Danish legislation

A lot of the world’s leading manufacturers of hearing instruments and audiologic equipment as well as some of the foremost pioneers in the field of audiology and hearing healthcare are Danish.

The history of Otometrics starts in Denmark, and evolves with landmarks achieved around the world particularly in Germany and the USA.

Let’s turn back time to 1950 and some epoch-making legislation passed by the Danish parliament: hearing examinations and hearing aids were made available for all, free of charge, and 3 regional hearing centers were established in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Odense. Henceforth, “defective hearing must be regarded as a handicap equal to the loss of a limb or similar afflictions".

This far-reaching legislation not only opened up new possibilities with regard to compensation for loss of hearing, but also promoted increased industrial and research activities in the field of hearing healthcare.

Already at this time, a number of Danish doctors and researchers were carrying out pioneering work in the fields of audiology and otology. They included Dr. Otto Metz, who performed the first middle ear measurements using a mechanical impedance bridge he himself had developed.

Dr. Otto Metz carried out his pioneering work
with impedance measurements at Rigshospitalet
- this photo is from the 1950s.

Poul Madsen opens shop in Odense

In the late 1950s, after some years working for Bang & Olufsen, an electronics engineer named Poul Madsen acquired a small radio shop in Odense. Later, Dr. Ole Bentzen, one of the leading pioneers of audiology in Denmark, persuaded Madsen to design and produce audiometers for the hearing center he was setting up in Odense.

Poul Madsen started his first company, Amplex, in 1955 in Odense and named his first product after Ole Bentzen, the OB 1.

The 1960s see the Danish innovation of impedance measurement spread around the globe

Madsen moves to Copenhagen

Building on the work of Dr. Otto Metz, Dr. K. Terkildsen of the University Hospital of Copenhagen (Rigshospitalet) and Engineer Scott-Nielsen had been experimenting for some time with impedance measurements of the middle ear.

By 1960, they needed someone to convert their drawings into a working instrument so they turned to Poul Madsen. Since this collaboration presented an opportunity to move to Copenhagen, Madsen sold Amplex to the Krogsø family (who changed the company’s name to Kamplex, which subsequently became Danplex) and founded Madsen Electronics.

Within two years, the world’s first electro-acoustic “impedance bridge” was a reality.

Scott-Nielsen and Terkildsen with the ZO 61
electro-acoustic “impedance bridge.

Spreading the word about impedance measurements

The 1960s saw Madsen Electronics expand to a full product line of both portable and stationary audiometers and impedance bridges (forerunners of today’s middle ear analyzers).

Madsen, Terkildsen and Scott-Nielsen traveled the world holding seminars on impedance measurements. Because of the speed and objectivity with which it detected middle ear abnormalities, this application gained rapid acceptance in Europe and, especially, in the USA.

In fact, such was the interest in the new technique that Poul Madsen decided to cross the Atlantic permanently and so, in the late 1960s, he moved to Canada where he set up Madsen

Electronics, Inc., in Toronto, and with a sales office in Buffalo, NY.

The 1970s see more new companies and more new applications in the fields of audiology and balance

Hortmann builds ground-breaking vestibular unit

In 1971, a young engineer established the Hortmann KG in Metzingen, Germany. Working together with ENT doctors and clinics, Günter Hortmann succeeded in developing vestibular equipment to record eye movements as an alternative to the primitive Frenzel lenses being used at the time.

The subsequent introduction of the first Photo-Electric Nystagmograph marked the inception of a long period of success and collaboration in the vestibular and audiology fields.

Danplex is founded in 1972

When Kamplex went out of business in 1971, the former Technical Director Jørgen Jensen purchased some of the assets from the estate, e.g. production equipment and inventory, and founded Danplex in 1972. The rest of the assets were bought by the newly started Interacoustics under Per Honoré.

Moving from Assens to Odense, Danplex began developing advanced, portable audiometers and impedance bridges. The ZA20 impedance bridge was launched with great success in 1973 while 1976 saw the introduction of the first CMOS-based audiometer, the AS50, featuring LEDs and an audiogram pad on the front panel for easy and accurate threshold entry.

However, in 1979, the company was sold to the leading hearing aid manufacturer Rexton of Switzerland. Rexton, in turn, merged the company with Dana Medica, owned by former Danavox sales manager Gunnar Klansø.

Headquartered in Copenhagen, production and R&D were moved in 1981 to Sanderum just outside Odense, and a new era of hectic activity and expansion began.

The early days of ABR

In the early 1970s, Madsen Electronics started working together with another pioneer at Rigshospitalet, Poul Osterhammel, on a new, non-invasive technique for identifying brain tumors called evoked response audiometry (ERA). Naturally, he turned to friend and mentor Poul Madsen for help in constructing hardware for data collection.

This collaboration led to the ERA 74, the world’s first commercially available system for measuring auditory brainstem responses (ABR). Over the next 10 years, Madsen, Osterhammel and Terkildsen toured the world giving talks on evoked response audiometry.

Another landmark occurred in 1971 when, in Toronto, Madsen launched the ZO 70, the impedance bridge that became the workhorse of middle ear diagnostics for many years to come – as well as the device generations of audiologists learned on.

Electronics and computer software begin to lift technology in the 1980s

The arrival of the microprocessor

By the beginning of the 1980s, LEDs and microprocessors were beginning to have an impact on the hearing industry leading gradually to less bulky test devices and hearing instruments.

In 1981, Delmar F. Bloem and Robert M. Simenson acquired groundbreaking electro-nystagmograph (ENG) technology from its developers, Instrumentation and Control Systems, Inc., and founded ICS Medical.

Del and Bob, as they were known, succeeded in building up a company that specialized in technological innovations in balance and evoked potential testing, harnessing the power of computer technology at a time when it was still in its infancy.

At the same time, Madsen Electronics was applying microprocessor-based technology to the popular OB 822 clinical audiometer (>4000 units sold) and to the ERA 2250 evoked response audiometer.

Danplex likewise exploited the new electronics to automatize audiometry and middle ear testing while Hortmann began marketing Danplex audiometers and tympanometers in Germany. Besides getting involved in the exciting new field of cochlear implants, Hortmann also collaborated with the Westend Clinic at Berlin University to develop evoked response technology.

Madsen celebrates the first 25 years

In 1985, Poul Madsen and friends from all over the world gathered in Herlev to celebrate the company’s 25th Jubilee. By this time, both Madsen companies had taken the technological leap to developing testing systems featuring monitors and menu-driven user interfaces: the ZO 174 for immittance measurement and the IGO-HAT 1000 for measuring insertion gain. This latter technique measured hearing instrument (H.I.) performance at the eardrum and has since become the universal standard for verifying H.I. fit (nowadays more commonly known now as real ear measurement).

In 1985, however, the former R&D manager at Madsen Electronics, Steen Rasmussen, had won the race to bring a working device to the market (his new company, Rastronics, sold the CCI-10 in prolific
numbers worldwide in the mid to late 1980s and he became known
as the father of REM).

Another first, this time in ENG

1984 had also been a very busy year for ICS Medical who broke new ground in the field of balance testing with the first commercial computer-based system for electronystagmography (ENG).

ICS were also the first to integrate computer-controlled optical and caloric stimuli with the                              recording and analysis system.

Yet another first – audiogram transfer to a PC

From the early 1980s, Madsen Electronics had foreseen the significance of the PC (the OB 822 was equipped with a serial data port from its inception in 1982). After some years’ collaboration with an Italian software developer on audiological software, 1989 bore witness to a major landmark: an audiogram threshold was successfully transferred from an audiometer to a PC in front of an enthusiastic audience of North American dealers in Herlev.

In 1983, Danplex changed its name to Rexton Danplex and became involved in the manufacture of custom-made hearing aids. The company was taken over in 1987 by Siemens and given the task of constructing an interface box for fitting digital hearing aids called the PMC. Three new immittance devices were launched in 1988, all in a smart, high-tech design. The cutting-edge HandTymp even featured infrared data transfer to printer.

The 1990s – a decade of accelerating change

GN Danavox points the way

In June 1990, Madsen Electronics was acquired by GN Danavox (GND) and became part of GN Great Nordic, the Danish-based technology group founded in 1869.

Significantly, the acquisition brought a manufacturer of hearing instruments together with a manufacturer of diagnostic equipment. And this happened fortuitously at a time when computerization was starting to have a major impact on the hearing industry.

The synergies were not long in coming

GND was a prime mover behind HIMSA (the Hearing Instrument Manufacturers' Software Association), which was developing NOAH, a common software platform for the programming of hearing aids.

The contract for the hardware interface was won by Madsen and, at the UHA meeting which followed in October 1993, the HI-PRO interface box was presented to the hearing industry for the first time. Manufactured according to HIMSA’s specifications, this little box has by now found its way into just about every H.I. dispenser’s shop or clinic in the world – more than 35,000 units so far.

Moreover, the NOAH/HI-PRO standard has been adopted by most manufacturers in the industry and blazed a trail for both digital hearing instruments and for computerized fitting and programming.

The industry standard for objective H.I. fitting and verification

Foreseeing the trend towards computerization, two years of intensive market research and product development by a joint Madsen/Danavox task force gave birth in 1995 to the Aurical. This PC-based system runs under NOAH and combines audiometry with H.I. fitting, testing and programming.

Reorganization and consolidation

The 1990s saw a number of major trends in the hearing industry with expressions like “digital” and “consolidation” becoming buzzwords. The decade also saw a complete reorganization of Madsen’s activities in North America. The plant in Toronto was closed down and all manufacturing and R&D transferred to Denmark. In 1992, the sales and service office was transferred to the premises of GN Danavox Inc. in Minneapolis.

In Denmark, Rexton Danplex took over Rastronics in 1991 after that company had struck a major deal to supply REM equipment to Starkey in the U.S. The expanded company went on to develop a PC-based audiometry and fitting system called UNITY for Siemens and a similar system, the PFS 6000, for Starkey. In 1997, H.I. activities were discontinued and Danplex began to focus exclusively on OEM activities – the following year saw another deal, this time with MedRx for the manufacture of the Otowizard.

ICS Medical continued to grow launching CHARTR, a Windows-based balance and/or evoked potential test system, and moving into spacious new premises in Schaumburg, Illinois, in 1999.

Another significant development had been the purchase in 1992 of a 50% share in Technodata by GN Danavox. Renamed AuditData, the software development company was the brainchild of Claus Petersen and specialized in hospital-based audiologic software. This was another step towards promoting computerization in audiology.

Driving towards growth

The appointment of Michael Brock as President of Madsen Electronics in the summer of 1997 signaled the start of a new era not just for the “audiologic equipment division” of GND in particular, but for the world of audiologic and balance assessment in general.

Realizing how fragmented the market for audiologic equipment was, Brock decided to do something about it. Rationalization and growth had to be the answer.

Fortunately, the timing was good – the marketplace was rapidly being “computerized” and favored manufacturers whose products fitted into practices where PCs were being used to fit hearing instruments.

With Aurical and HI-PRO sales picking up, the company was in an ideal position for expansion. And the next few years saw remarkable organic growth of around 18% per year.

Aurical was more than innovation, it was a revolution

The Aurical didn’t just provide a PC interface – and there were plenty of customers who baulked at using a keyboard or mouse for finding thresholds – it combined four functions in one box. Together with a laptop PC, the entire system could be packed into one rolling case and transported anywhere.

Aurical has become the gold standard

When the world’s largest audiology chain, Amplifon of Italy with operations in 11 countries, purchased 1,500 complete systems, the stage was set for unparalleled growth.

With more than 10,000 systems now in use around the world, Aurical has led the way for integrating computers into the process by which patients are tested and fitted with hearing instruments.

The birth of a new powerhouse in the hearing healthcare industry

The 1990s not only saw the increasing penetration of computers and software, but also marked a clear trend in the hearing healthcare industry towards consolidation.

In 1999, this trend came very close to home when GND merged with ReSound Corp. to form GN ReSound (GNR), a new industry powerhouse. Later that year, Madsen was likewise strengthened by the acquisition of Danplex thus becoming, at a stroke, the world’s largest manufacturer of audiologic equipment.

2000 - Bringing us all together in the new millenium

By 2000, it had become obvious that organic growth alone was not enough to realize the vision of a larger, more dominant company that could contribute more to the world of audiology. Surely, economies of scale would benefit all concerned, manufacturers, distributors and customers. Especially seen in light of the rising costs of software development.

Certainly, the integration of Madsen and Danplex showed the way forwards and became the foundation upon which a strong audiologic instrumentation business would be built up within the GN Group. This development was reinforced by the acquisitions in 2000 of Hortmann in Germany and ICS Medical in the USA, which added balance assessment and ABR measurement to the portfolio.

As a result of both unprecedented growth and these acquisitions, an “umbrella” company called GN Otometrics was established with effect from January 1, 2001. A couple of months later, the process of integration was accelerated when we moved into new headquarters near GNR in Taastrup.

A complete product portfolio

One of the benefits of the new company was that we could offer a wide range of products covering all applications in the audiologic and balance fields. This led to our present structure with the application areas Data management, Hearing assessment, Fitting & Testing and Balance assessment.

Implementing a new way of working

The first tangible fruits of our union came at the beginning of 2002 when work started on a massive new immittance development project nicknamed “Sophie”. Ambitious design goals called for a new way of working and involved many disciplines across the entire organization – in Germany and the USA as well as in Denmark.

The result of this remarkable project was the groundbreaking OTOflex 100 introduced at AAA in 2004 – another first from a company which can boast of many. This time, Otometrics has produced a hand-held, wireless miracle – and launched another revolution.

Passing the baton

In the summer of 2004, after 7 years at the helm of Otometrics, Michael Brock left the company to take up the position of Managing director at B&K Medical, a leading manufacturer of ultrasonic medical equipment.

With effect from October 1, 2004, Soren Holst took over the reins at Otometrics, bringing with him extensive experience within the hearing healthcare industry.