PROVIDENCE — Bionica Corp. has filed for eight patents related to the Clio, a hearing aid it is developing in a Jewelry District loft.

The small company, financed in part by The Slater Technology Fund, has resisted disclosing many aspects of its technology. But after completing the patent filings, Bionica’s chief executive officer, Peter T. Hahn, offered some general design details for the first time.

The Clio’s controls are simple to operate, modeled after popular digital music players, Hahn said in an interview. The acoustic feedback triggered by many hearing aides, he said, was eliminated by separating the microphone from the speaker.

A “very powerful” microprocessor, specially designed software and a strategic microphone array will help distinguish between speech and background noise, Hahn said.

The Clio has also been built to adapt to various settings, with special software “programs” designed to interpret door bells, house alarms and TVs. Different programs will activate different microphones depending on the situation, according to the company, founded two years ago.

Users will be able to scroll through a menu of the programs using a hand-held device that Bionica compares to an Apple iPhone. It will contain a radio frequency module that communicates with an earpiece.

“We have solved problems very uniquely,” said Hahn, a veteran of the medical-device industry who was hired by Bionica in February.

Bionica does not expect to market the Clio until at least 2009.

But the company’s founders — chief technology officer Ralph Beckman and vice president of project development Kipp Bradford — have already begun introducing a prototype to friends who have struggled with hearing loss.

“We have a cadre of hearing-impaired friends who we plug in and see if they light up,” Beckman said.

Bionica is now planning a more scientific analysis, partnering with The Cleveland Clinic for a nine-month clinical study.

The company hopes to publish the results in a scientific journal, and to use the findings to promote the Clio in advertisements. (The study is not required for registering the device with the Food and Drug Administration, Bradford said.)

The study, scheduled to begin early next year, will also help determine what types of hearing losses are improved by the Clio, as well as how patients with different levels of hearing loss respond to the device.

There are 30 million hearing-impaired Americans, but only 5 million of them use hearing aids, according to Bionica. Hearing aids cost $3,000 on average, Hahn said.

Several hearing aids already on the market incorporate hand-held controls and sophisticated software programs. But Beckman said Bionica’s technology is innovative, drawing on techniques used in the consumer electronics market.

“Just because they say this is the setting for a concert hall does not mean that’s what you’re going to hear,” Beckman said. “They sound worse than a cheap radio.”

Bionica has sought advice from researchers at Brown University to learn more about how the brain interprets sound, giving the software used in Clio an edge in the industry, Bradford said.

“We think the hard-of-hearing community will be very excited,” Bradford said.

bgedan@projo.com