Our story
Cleanhearing Sono is the result of an international collaboration involving inventors, academics, clinicians, and hearing industry experts. Our goal is to develop accessible, evidence-based solutions for tinnitus.
Here are some of our milestones to date:
October 2017
Cleanhearing company was formed after a meeting between our founders, Hidero Niioka and Gerald Neuwirth, an Austrian engineer, who had developed a medical device to successfully treat his own chronic noise-induced tinnitus. They agreed to collaborate in further developing the technology as a medical device for home use.
December 2017
Kyoto University made an anchor investment so we could start work on the prototype. We established our world-class scientific advisory board and expanded our team to begin development.
May 2019
We finalised the Sono prototype.
September 2020
We closed our pre-seed funding round of US$ 1.3M and confirmed our manufacturing partners for mass production.
November 2019
We were invited to enter the Falling Walls Venture competition for health technology startups and reached the global finals in Berlin where we were placed in the top 3 for our category.
Feb. 2021
We received our EN ISO 13485 certification and Class IIa medical device approval.
March 2021
We completed the tooling by early 2021 and started on the first round of manufacturing and testing.
May 2021
The Cleanhearing tinnitus app was released on the App Store and Google Play.
May- Dec. 2021
Sono went on sale in the UK and Europe. We later introduced our 2-month, 4-month and 6-month rental options.
Jan. 2023
The South Africa Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) approved Sono as a tinnitus treatment in South Africa.
Thank you for following our journey so far. If you haven’t done so already, why not find out how Sono works or see answers to common FAQs ?