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Leading and managing audiology service through a social enterprise model

As these things sometimes happen, our first conversations about Social Enterprise happened pretty much by chance and in our case were a by-product of discussions about a new department having outgrown the current one. The National Health Service (NHS) Audiology...

Benchmarking for innovation in healthcare ­– an approach from 
Down Under and a gap in the 
National Health Service?

Benchmarking is a process of comparison between the performance characteristics of separate, often competing, organisations intended to enable each participant to improve its own performance [1]. Often, in healthcare, benchmarking is carried out by central government departments or regional agencies...

The changing role of audiology

Audiology has changed dramatically in recent years. Cochlear implants and high power hearing aids have made hearing really available to children with essentially any degree of hearing loss. Those of us who have been in the field for a long...

Wireless accessories for hearing aid users: putting the ‘soul’ back into hearing – a case study

The following case study reports on the experiences of a hearing impaired National Health Service (NHS) patient who was given Bluetooth accessories as part of a study into their benefits when used with hearing aids [1]. The name of the...

Help shape the future of mild to moderate hearing loss research

A James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership has been formed to help shape the future of research into mild-moderate hearing loss. Who is the Priority Setting Partnership? The Partnership brings together Hearing Link, Action on Hearing Loss, the British Society...

Hearing loss and Alport syndrome

Alport syndrome (AS) includes a group of hereditary diseases caused by mutations in the COL4A3, COL4A4 or COL4A5 genes. These genes are responsible for the biosynthesis of α3, α4 and α5 collagen IV chains, which are located in the glomerular...

The impact of hearing loss in children with Down syndrome

Hearing loss and language development Down syndrome (DS) usually arises due to trisomy 21 and is associated with intellectual disability and risks of developmental delays and difficulties, including hearing loss. Hearing loss is common in children with DS [1]. In...

Rehabilitation of unilateral sensorineural hearing loss: bone vs air conduction

The re-routing of sound from the deafened ear to the hearing ear has been the mainstay of rehabilitation for SSD for many years. Both hearing aid and bone conduction technology have undergone significant advances over the past decade. This article...

Clinical WG1. Establishing a standard for tinnitus: patient assessment and characterisation

Rilana Cima and Haúla Haider introduce an ambitious pan-European collaboration that seeks to establish guidelines for achieving best clinical practice for managing, assessing and treating patients with different tinnitus profiles. Tinnitus heterogeneity is the major reason for inconsistent results in...

Neuroimaging WG3. Neuroimaging as a window on the heterogeneity of tinnitus

Pim van Dijk and Sven Vanneste describe the hope that brain imaging techniques used for research will provide a better understanding of the heterogeneity of tinnitus through large-scale analysis. Their project will create a procedure whereby researchers can submit their...

Genetics WG4. Improving diagnosis and drug development through the genetic understanding of tinnitus subtypes: a TINNET endeavour

Christopher R Cederroth and Jose Antonio Lopez-Escamez explain how progress is being made to investigate the contribution of genetic factors to tinnitus, including a subtype of ‘extreme’ tinnitus in Ménière’s disease. Genetics WG4 is working towards determining the genetic basis...

The Veterans Hearing Fund

Dawn Bramham introduces us to the newly launched Veterans Hearing Fund (VHF). This organisation aims to improve the lives of military personnel with hearing loss by providing access to technologies, services and bespoke rehabilitation that are not routinely available via...