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Innovation for deaf and reduced hearing patients: leaders discuss key issues and solutions

Representatives from RNID, Tympahealth and TAD Medical discuss with Professor Mike Bewick the importance of innovation as a means to improve health outcomes for patients with deafness and hard-of-hearing.

On this episode of Innovating Healthcare, Chamber UK looked at the key health issues on deafness and hard-of-hearing with our Chair Professor Mike Bewick, former Deputy National Medical Director at NHS England. The speakers leveraged their professional experience to introduce the causes and extent of the problem of hearing loss, the lack of deaf awareness, and the inadequacies in contemporary healthcare services in the UK for treating deafness and hearing loss. The three speakers combined insights from both the corporate and non-profit sectors in a rich discussion.

Private sector innovation

Speaking in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Director at TAD Medical, Tom Anderson-Dixon described how his research showed deaf people find general day-to-day interactions increasingly harder due to the universal adoption of face masks during the pandemic. Formerly some patients with deafness and reduced hearing were able to rely on lip-reading to interpret communication. He cited this as the factor that pushed TAD Medical to make face masks more convenient.

Mr. Anderson-Dixon emphasised his own experience that face masks made communication difficult even for those without hearing loss. This led the company to introduce its new product, the transparent face mask ‘Smile Shield‘, to the market with NHS approval. Thus, TAD Medical’s recognition of the hearing loss issue enabled it to introduce a broad-usage product.

He said: “We realised that it’s not just people with hearing loss that rely on facial expression and lip-reading. So we developed a transparent face mask which has now gained approval from the Department of Health and Social Care and is beginning to be widely used throughout the NHS and the wider community.”

Mirusanthan Santhiyapillai of TympaHealth Technologies narrated his CEO, Dr Krishan Ramdoo’s personal familiarity with the difficulties patients faced with basic hearing loss treatment services. This compelled Krishan to launch TympaHealth Technologies, a medical technological system offering hearing assessments, ear imaging, and wax microsuction.

Awareness and partnerships

Crystal Rolfe, Associate Director of Health at the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), offered her insight from civil society on the disparity between the level of deaf awareness and the magnitude of the problem. Ms. Rolfe stated that 12 million people in the UK currently have varying extents of hearing loss.

Despite this, awareness remains low in the country overall. Ms. Rolfe raised further the issue that many people suffering from hearing loss in the UK and yet are not medically diagnosed. She explained undiagnosed hearing loss is a common comorbidity of depression and dementia, also contributing to social isolation as people fail to understand and develop a solution to it. This could result in unforeseen impacts such as pushing many into early retirement.

Given the size of the problem and the shortfall in public awareness, Ms. Rolfe called on commissioners to take urgent notice and brought the NHS into focus as a key stakeholder, stating that there is widespread hesitance in the populace to report their hearing issues to the NHS.

She also attributed great importance to technology and innovation as a way of readdressing the problem. The RNID is focusing on identifying stages of the hearing loss treatment pathway where remote technology can be used to increase the efficiency of hearing assessments and to thus tailor hearing aids accordingly.

In this endeavour, Ms. Rolfe described audiology departments across the UK as key partners. She added that ultimately smaller steps such as people getting their hearing checked, come before technological innovation in terms of the urgency of the overall response to tackling the hearing loss problem and the lack of awareness about it.

She explained: “We know that there’s an uptick in all different kinds of technology, but I think the biggest thing that can make a difference, is if people get their hearing checked”. In this context, RNID has created a 3-minute long hearing check. She also suggested using GPs to refer people in accessing hearing checks and a national screening of hearing abilities.

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Royal National Institute for Deaf People

Stakeholder integration and capacity building

Mr. Santhiyapillai offered a detailed description of the lengthy process a patient with hearing loss must go through to start their treatment. Emphasizing the lengthy waiting periods and bottlenecks involved, he cited TympaHealth’s solution as the empowerment of both non-specialist and specialist clinicians.

“We want to actually make that pathway a lot more efficient and a lot quicker by empowering non-specialist clinicians and specialist clinicians within the community – that’s your pharmacists, your opticians, your nurses, your GPs – to be able to directly look at the ear,” he explained.

Thus, TympaHealth’s approach involved bridging capacity gaps among the wide array of stakeholders at every level of the overall healthcare setting. Alongside the innovative aspect of TympaHealth’s work, Mr. Santhiyapillai also emphasized the greater mobility and partnerships TympaHealth facilitates across the health sector via this approach:

He said: “I’m going to be able to facilitate a hearing screen […] that will then allow the movement of that patient directly to the correct provider for the next part of that hearing and healthcare journey”. Mr. Santhiyapillai went on to discuss the different partnership models under which TympaHealth engages healthcare stakeholders.

TympaHealth’s partnerships with stakeholders at every level contribute to greater interaction and coordination between them. This helps reduce the time taken for a patient to be referred from one level of healthcare to the next, depending on the extent of their hearing loss.

Following this, Ms. Rolfe discussed RNID’s special focus on creating efficiencies in audiology services. “We’re looking to work with commissioners and audiologists across the UK and the British Academy of Audiology to try and look at how technology, including remote equipment, can be used to do that”, she explained.

Conclusion

This episode of Innovating Healthcare proved a rich discussion on the clearly overlooked issue of deafness and reduced hearing. The breadth and expertise of the panelists allowed a conversation of different voices in this space, and a synthesis of ideas to better improve health outcomes. TAD Medical’s ‘Smile Shield’ proves the wide impact innovative products can have on patients and health outcomes across the country. Innovation as a means to improve health outcomes and reduce inequalities is the focus of Curia’s NHS Innovation & Life Sciences Commission.

Using his own personal experience, Tom Anderson-Dixon showed the need for the public to think differently about how day-to-day activities can be so easy for many, yet so difficult for deaf and reducing hearing patients. Combing the thoughts of technology makers with civil society shows the strides that can be furthered when the voice of patients is heard and listened to by policymakers and the healthcare industry.

For information on TAD Medical’s innovative ‘Smile shield’, see HOME – Smile Shield Mask – Safe, Clear Communication or contact Tom directly at tom@tadmedical.co.uk

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