Hearing training app now free for users to help contribute to major research project

Digital hearing health company eargym has launched a new research project to investigate the effectiveness of hearing training to expand researchers’ understanding of the impact of auditory training as a form of preventative hearing care.

The study aims to attract a minimum of 10,000 participants to better understand how hearing training impacts auditory processing skills like speech comprehension and the ability to locate where sounds are coming from.

In preliminary studies, eargym says that 83 percent of its users reported an improvement in their hearing skills after using the eargym app for auditory training for seven weeks.

Now, eargym researchers are interested in the impact of hearing training on users who start training with different hearing ability levels, as well as training adherence in groups with different attitudes to smartphone technology. Their aim is to find new ways to deliver and improve auditory training at scale and for a wider range of hearing skills and to measure factors which influence training engagement.

To facilitate this research, eargym is making its hearing training app available for users to download and use for free until the end of September 2024.

The eargym app features a series of accessible, interactive games and activities that simulate realistic and challenging listening scenarios to help improve users’ ability to derive meaning from the sounds they hear.

Users who sign up will be supporting eargym’s mission to tackle the social and cognitive impacts of hearing loss. The eargym app is available on the iOS and Android app stores now.

eargym plans to publish the findings of its research in early 2025.

Andy Shanks, a co-founder of eargym, commented: “We’re really excited to be launching this ambitious research project and contribute to vital hearing health research.

“Contrary to popular belief, hearing loss is not an inevitable consequence of ageing. We can take steps to improve and protect our hearing throughout our lives, yet preventative measures like hearing training have traditionally been under-researched.

“Our data at eargym already shows the transformative impact hearing training can have on our ability to process sounds. Now, we want to deepen and widen our research and use our platform to make hearing training even more effective and accessible. Imagine improving and maintaining your hearing by up to 20 percent or more: it could make a big difference to the lives of so many people.”

The games on the eargym app include a “busy barista” exercise, where users must discern speech over a cafe’s bustling background noise, and a “sound seeking” exercise, where users make their way through forests, jungles, and oceans to locate the sources of different sounds. Each game is designed to be immersive and to help users practise specific auditory processing skills regularly.

eargym was set up by former NHS CEO Amanda Philpott and DJ Andy Shanks in 2020, after they were both diagnosed with hearing loss.

Amanda has moderate age-related hearing loss, while Andy has “notch” or noise-induced hearing loss due to DJ-ing. Both found hearing loss isolating, and it impacted their ability to socialise and communicate. They created eargym to empower others to better understand their hearing health and take proactive steps to protect it.

A previous eargym study discovered that three in five Brits struggle to hear conversations in noisy places, which is also known as the “cocktail party effect”.