Our Story

About Hough Ear Institute

Hough Ear Institute (HEI) was established in the early 1980s under the Baptist Medical Center Foundation (now INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center) to continue the pioneering work of Dr. Jack Van Doren Hough.

Dr. Hough was an internationally respected otologist and ear surgeon who invented micro-surgical procedures for restoring hearing to patients with a variety of ear-related issues and injuries. Many microsurgical instruments still in use today were invented by Dr. Hough to perform those procedures. He also had his hand in creating and developing several electromagnetic devices for bone conduction and inner ear deafness.

HEI was established as an independent, non-profit research organization in 1996 and developed close working relationships and engaged in research projects with both Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma, including Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center, and Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. These relationships helped foster HEI’s new focus of therapeutic answers to hearing loss instead of devices.

Today, HEI honors Dr. Hough’s innovative legacy by continuing his work to restore hearing worldwide through research, teaching, and humanitarian efforts so that all who have ears can hear.

Our Founder

Dr. Jack Van Doren Hough

Dr. Jack Hough was pioneering ear surgery and experimental research of the ear for much of his life. In the 1950s, Dr. Hough invented and performed a new, microscopic surgery on the middle ear to restore hearing – a surgery still implemented today. By 1963, Dr. Hough opened his practice in what would later become the Hough Ear Institute building. He assembled a team of outstanding otologic and neurotologic surgeons, audiologists, speech pathologists, neurophysiologists, biomedical engineers, physicists, and mechanical and electrical engineers to not only treat patients, but discover and develop better ways to care for them. His team represented a rare merger of medical, technological, and engineering professionals who skillfully discovered and developed new surgical procedures and medical devices now widely used throughout the world.

To learn more about Dr. Jack Hough, click the link to the article below from The Journal, Oklahoma State Medical Association.
Dr.Hough Biography
Used by permission from the original publisher, Journal of the Oklahoma State Medical Association, May/June 1998 edition.