BIG RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A professor with Ferris State University has created a new device that will help make wearing glasses easier for people with a cochlear implant.

The Protoconch was invented by Daniel Taylor, the dean of the Michigan College of Optometry, along with co-inventor Jaci Vander Ploeg from the Mechanical Engineering Technology program.

Taylor created the device for his 5-year-old son Britt who wears glasses and has needed a cochlear implant since he was a 1-year-old.

“I saw someone getting fit in a pair of sunglasses that had Bluetooth earbuds built in and I thought, ‘Oh that’s cool I am sure they have something equally as cool for people who have cochlear implants,’ and it turns out they didn’t,” Taylor said.

Taylor started developing the device about four years ago.

“The benefit of ours is this is a ball and socket joint, so basically you just lift it off and then just place it back on again making it a lot easier to take on and off throughout the day,” Taylor said. 

The glasses frame and the cochlear implant occupy the same space above the ears, which pose a list of challenges.

“It can be uncomfortable, it can be difficult to wear glasses at the same time, you can take your glasses off and the cochlear processor can fall off,” Taylor said.

The project was made possible with grant funding from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.  

“The device is still not completely done. It’s patented but we still need to go through a few more rounds of prototyping to make it perfect so we wear it sometimes and sometimes we use a very thin light pair of glasses,” Taylor said. 

The work to make the device available is only just beginning.

“The real hope is that we get this to the point where it’s very easy for us to license this to a medical device manufacturer, a frame manufacturer maybe a cochlear implant company that wants to make it available to their customers,” Taylor said.