The reConnect Institute

reConnect, a center of excellence dedicated to hearing and speech disorders, is led by the Hearing Institute in collaboration with the AP-HP, Inserm, the University of Paris Cité, the Fondation Pour l’Audition and the Institut Pasteur.

reConnect bring together all the players in hearing health and intensify innovation and entrepreneurship around this major public health issue.

Why the reConnect project?

Hearing loss and hearing impairments are a major global burden.

Three factors contribute to the increasing number of people suffering from hearing loss and hearing disorders: we live longer, we have children later, our environments contain new noise pollution (such as compressed sounds).

Today, the tools and medical treatment available of these disorders don’t perfectly meet the growing and diversifying needs. While we can compensate for some hearing deficits, we still don’t know how to cure them, even though they are one of the main causes of social and professional isolation.

Our mission

The ambition is to transition from compensatory medicine to reparative medicine, with the help of the fundamental discoveries made over the past 20 years in the fields of genetics and neurophysiology.

reConnect will pave the way for the creation of new clinical applications with major societal and academic impacts. Its scientific and operational organization, supported by its founding members, aims to create an institute that is unique, playing a major role in the development of European healthcare policies and attracting the best scientists and clinicians from all over the world.

The Institute's multidisciplinary structure, where research and innovation are at the service of clinical practice and academic training, aims to meet the medical, societal and educational needs raised by hearing disorders.

Scientific and clinical organization

The reConnect Institute is organised in 11 workpackages: 5 scientific and clinical workpackages and 6 supporting workpackages.

Clinical and scientific core

WP1 : Abrupt and fluctuating deafness
WP2 : Preventing and curing progressive hearing loss
WP3: Auditory perception disorders
WP4: Hearing in dementia
WP5: Audiophonological disorders

Supporting Workpackages

WP6: Network and Data Science
WP7: Connected Research and Medicine
WP8: Prevention, Ethics, and Society
WP9: Education, Training, and Communication
WP10: Innovation Management and Industrial Translation
WP11: Cross-WP interfaces and new frontiers

Platforms

Existing platforms

CeRIAH Bench (early phase trials/volunteers)
IdA – preclinical research
Platforms: animal phénotyping, bioimaging, signal processing

New platforms

CeRIAH-bedside (clinical trials/patients)
Platforms: experimental surgery, genomics/proteomics
Neurostimulation and imaging (PET scan, BCI)

What is an IHU?

An Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire (IHU) is an establishment of scientific and medical excellence built on 4 pillars:

An IHU brings together research teams, healthcare professionals, academics, established companies in the sector and new start-ups around a single clinical theme. Its aim is to encourage developments in medical research that directly benefit patients and the general population.