It started with Poul Madsen. More than 50 years ago, with a great mind and a clear vision, the electronics engineer started a small company for designing and producing audiometers. He would undoubtedly be amazed at what his small operation has become: It was the foundation of a multi-million dollar corporation that designs and manufactures the world’s leading computer-based audiological, otoneurologic and vestibular instrumentation equipment. And, like Madsen Electronics, each of these companies was once no more than a person with an idea for improving hearing and balance healthcare. Their passion and dedication turned ideas into solutions and are continuing to make a significant difference in people’s lives.
The stories behind the names are the heritage of the Otometrics family. Stories that remind us of what we share – a collective history, a sense of purpose and a mutual commitment toward what Poul Madsen called “helping the world to better hearing.”
The 1950s: How it all began
Groundbreaking Danish legislation
To tell the story of GN Otometrics means returning to 1950 and some groundbreaking legislation passed by the Danish parliament: Hearing examinations and hearing aids were made available to all, free of charge. “Defective hearing,” the legislation stated, “must be regarded as a handicap equal to the loss of a limb or similar afflictions.” Three regional hearing centers were established in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Odense.
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 audiology and otology. They included Dr. Otto Metz, who performed the first middle-ear measurements using a mechanical impedance bridge he himself had developed.
Poul Madsen opens shop in Odense
In the late 1950s, after working for Bang & Olufsen, Poul Madsen acquired a small radio shop in Odense. Later, Dr. Ole Bentzen, one of Denmark’s most respected pioneers of audiology, persuaded Madsen to design and produce audiometers for the hearing center he was setting up in Odense. It was then that Madsen put into motion a multi-national corporation that would ultimately become GN Otometrics. He started his first company, Amplex, in 1955 in Odense and named his first product after Ole Bentzen, the OB 1.
The 1960s: Danish innovation of impedance measurement spreads throughout the globe
Madsen sells Amplex, moves to Copenhagen
Building on the work of Dr. Metz, Dr. K. Terkildsen of the University Hospital of Copenhagen (Rigshospitalet) and Engineer Knud Scott-Nielsen had been experimenting with impedance measurements of the middle ear.
By 1960, they needed someone to convert their drawings into a working instrument. 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.
The team had skill and vision. Within two years, the world’s first electro-acoustic “impedance bridge” was a reality.
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. 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: More new companies, more new applications
Hortmann builds ground-breaking vestibular unit
In 1971 a young electronics engineer named Günter Hortmann was becoming increasingly fascinated with the workings of human balance. He established Hortmann KG in Metzingen, West Germany. Working with his network of ENT doctors and clinicians he 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 (PENG) marked the beginning of a successful company history in the vestibular field and, later, in audiology as well.
Danplex founded in 1972
When Kamplex went out of business in 1971, the former technical director Jørgen Jensen purchased production equipment and inventory from the estate and founded Danplex. The rest of the assets were bought by the newly established 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.
In 1979 the merging of companies began in earnest. Danplex was sold to a 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 activity and expansion began.
Meanwhile, over at Madsen Electronics…
In the early 1970s, Madsen Electronics began to collaborate with a pioneer at Rigshospitalet, Poul Osterhammel, on a new, non-invasive technique for identifying brain tumors called evoked response audiometry (ERA). When Osterhammel needed help constructing hardware for his data collection, he turned to his old friend and mentor Poul Madsen. The future had arrived.
The 1980s: Electronics and computer software usher in a new paradigm
The arrival of the microprocessor
By the beginning of the 1980s, LEDs and microprocessors were beginning to impact the hearing industry, gradually and significantly leading to less bulky test devices and hearing instruments.
In 1981, two Americans, Delmar F. Bloem and Robert M. Simenson, acquired groundbreaking electro-nystagmograph (ENG) technology from its developers, Instrumentation and Control Systems, Inc. Armed with the technology and a keen understanding of its potential, the two founded ICS Medical. ICS specialised 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 and to the ERA 2250 evoked response audiometer.
Danplex likewise exploited the new electronics to automate audiometry and middle-ear testing. 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 his 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. Rasmussen’s new company, Rastronics, sold the CCI-10 in prolific numbers worldwide in the mid- to late-1980s. He became known as the father of REM.
Another first, this time in ENG
The year 1984 had also been a very busy one for ICS Medical, which broke new ground in balance testing with the first commercial computer-based system for electronystagmography (ENG).
The company was 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
In 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 at a time when computerization was starting to have a major impact on the hearing industry.
The synergies came quickly
GND was a prime mover behind the Hearing Instrument Manufacturers' Software Association (HIMSA), 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.
Setting the industry standard again – this time for objective H.I. fitting and verification
Foreseeing the trend towards computerisation, 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.
Reorganisation 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 reorganisation of Madsen’s activities in North America. The plant in Toronto was closed 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 1991, Rexton Danplex took over Rastronics after it struck a major deal to supply Real Ear Measurement 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. The company launched CHARTR, a Windows-based balance and/or Evoked Potential test system. In 1999 their size propelled a move into spacious new premises in Schaumburg, Illinois, in 1999.
Another significant development was the 1992 purchase of a 50% share in Technodata by GN Danavox. Renamed AuditData, the software development company was the brainchild of Claus Petersen and specialised in hospital-based audiologic software. This was another step towards computerisation in audiology.
Driving towards growth – yet again
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, but for the world of audiologic and balance assessment in general. Realising how fragmented the market for audiologic equipment was, Brock decided to do something about it. Rationalisation and growth had to be the answer.
The timing was excellent – the market was rapidly being computerised and manufacturers whose products had PC applications were the ones being used to fit hearing instruments.
With Aurical and HI-PRO sales growing, the company was in an ideal position for expansion. And the next few years saw remarkable organic growth of approximately 18% per year.
Aurical: More than innovation, it was a revolution
The Aurical didn’t just provide a PC interface – and there were plenty of customers who balked 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
The world’s largest audiology chain was Amplifon of Italy, which had operations in 11 countries. And when Amplifon purchased 1,500 Aurical 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 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 hit 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 the world’s largest manufacturer of audiologic equipment. There couldn’t have been a better way to begin a new decade – or a new millennium.
The New Millennium: Bringing us all together
A powerful new organization emerges: GN Otometrics
By 2000, it had become obvious that organic growth alone was not enough to realise the vision of a larger, more impactful company. While economies of scale would benefit all concerned, manufacturers, distributors and customers -- especially seen in light of the rising costs of software development – a broader and deeper product line was necessary.
The integration of Madsen and Danplex within the GN Group became the foundation upon which a strong audiologic instrumentation business would be built. 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. The process of integration was accelerated when we moved into new headquarters near GNR in Taastrup, Denmark.
Strength in integration – and individuality
Throughout the decade GN Otometrics’ strength has come from capitalising on a combined history of knowledge and innovation, while taking advantage of each company’s individual strengths. Those strengths allow us to offer a range of products covering all applications in the audiologic and balance fields. This led to our present structure of application areas in Data Management, Hearing Assessment, Newborn hearing screening, 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 organisation – 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 many. This time, Otometrics has produced a hand-held, wireless miracle – and launched another revolution.
Passing the baton
In the summer of 2004, after seven years at the helm of Otometrics, Michael Brock left the company to become 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.
The Future
GN Otometrics’ past is a melting pot of abilities and capabilities, knowledge and experience, that constitutes more than 50 years of growth. We are a family of companies that each began with one man and one idea, and we are all the stronger for their foresight and persistence. And while our contributions will increase, and our heritage become even richer, we will never lose focus of our mission: to develop innovative, intelligent solutions that lead to better lives.
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Industry Firsts
These are just some of the ways we’ve been leading the industry:
First electroacoustic “impedance bridge”
First commercially available EP instrument
First air caloric irrigator
First computer-compatible audiometer
First REM system
First computer-based system for electronystagmography (ENG)
First integrated fitting system with audiometry, REM and HIT
First cross-over clinical audiometer.