With 5 million Americans using hearing aids and another 25 million with hearing loss, Providence-based Bionica's first product, the Clio, is trying to revolutionize the market with innovative design features and proprietary signal versus noise separation software.

...Bionica Corp., has received funding from angel investors, and last week, the Slater Technology Fund announced it would invest $250,000.

Bionica was founded by [Ralph] Beckman and fellow Design Lab Inc. principal Kipp Bradford. It was incorporated in January 2006 but traces its origins to 2005.

Design Lab is now “in limbo,” Bradford said, “because all the employees at Design Lab are working full-time at Bionica.” The new company is leasing space from the old...

“The team here in-house is five of us,” Bradford said, “then we’ve got an electrical engineering firm we’re contracting with [Bay Computer Associates]. … We have a very close working relationship.”