As I'm pretty new to tinnitus, would you say that out of all these years we are seeing much more activity in the tinnitus space? From what it looks like, up until now there has not been as much activity. But it looks like a ton of stuff is going on. Am I right about this? Even beyond Neuromod, there seems to be a lot of stuff happening now.
I've been in this "business" for a long time and yes I think the recent years have seen an unprecedented increase in funding into the hearing loss/tinnitus space, which lead to several very promising treatments on the horizon (the three signal timing devices and FX-322 come to mind, but there are many others on the Research subforum).
I believe it's a combination of
1. an increased awareness among health companies that the hearing market is HUGE (see all those young people with earbuds surgically implanted into their heads 7/24),
2. a large amount of money sloshing around and looking for investments after 10 years of quantitative easing and a bull market,
3. scientific studies coming out show that the issue is tractable, there are viable solutions,
4. a lower barrier of entry into the health space and a burgeoning startup culture - "medtech" and "fintech" weren't even words 5-10 years ago, back then there were only "big pharma" companies and "too big to fail" banks, now we have small outfits competing in both spaces.
All of this leads to small, agile companies actively scouting out underserved populations and then getting busy researching using venture capital. As opposed to risk-averse giants sticking to tried-and-true cash cows. Neuromod itself is a small independent company, not an offshoot of big pharma.