UCLPartners assesses scalability of Tympahealth to tackle hearing-loss

An estimated 2.3 million people experience problems with excessive earwax every year in the UK. If left untreated, a wax build-up can lead to earache, infections, temporary hearing loss and social isolation.

Despite this, it is considered a low-risk condition and wax removal is often not prioritised. Indeed a recent survey by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) found the long waiting times or potential cost for treatment is resulting in a lot of people trying dangerous methods to remove the wax themselves. Methods including hair clips, paper clips, toothpicks, cotton buds, and Hopi ear candles, which resulted in 1 in 10 saying their symptoms got worse, or they caused themselves injury which required medical attention.

To try and address this problem, the Camden Health Evolution (CHE) federation, chaired by Dr Ammara Hughes, has launched a pilot to trial an innovative Tympahealth System. The pilot is running for 12 months across the central Camden Primary Care Network (PCN), which includes nine general practices that together have a combined population of 83,036 patients.

UCLPartners will evaluate the pilot through a health economics assessment. We will be looking at costs to the health service, comparing current practice to that of the Tympa-led service. The findings will inform a potential wider service roll out across North Central London.

Tympahealth System aims to increase accessibility to ear and hearing healthcare in the community through general practices and community pharmacies being trained-up to deliver simple screenings for ear conditions and microsuction to remove ear wax and debris.

The Tympahealth digital cloud technology will enable general practice staff to share any high-resolution images and videos they capture of patient examinations with ENT consultants at University College London Hospital. This will mean any serious disease identified can be triaged almost instantly, thereby allowing for more streamlined and effective patient care.

The pilot will be led by Dr Raj Gill a partner and a practicing Physician Associate at Bloomsbury Surgery in Camden. To date, six other Physician Associates have completed the training to provide wax removal and basic screening tests within their PCN.

Raj Gill, physician associate at Bloomsbury Surgery said: “Many of our hearing aid users struggled during the Covid pandemic as they were unable to access microsuction services. As such, we are now facing significant waiting times due to the patient backlog. UCLPartners realised that a new service was urgently needed to improve the health and well-being of these patients. Training and upskilling our Physician Associates is a great opportunity to support them to gain special interest skills.”

Some initial feedback on Tympahealth has suggested it can positively support NHS resources by reducing GP and specialist appointments. It can also assist in the delivery of a more streamlined service for patients – boosting rapid assessment and treatment whilst reducing required patient travel. A high level of patient satisfaction has been found with the Tympa service. Tympahealth is also being piloted in a similar fashion across south west London Integrated Care System (ICS).

Nausheen Hameed, Health Technology Advisor at UCLPartners said: “The Tympa innovation helps to bring care closer to home. This will not only help to tackle health inequalities through making care more accessible, it will also support the Government’s high-volume, low complexity programme, which aims to support elective recovery and the standardisation of patient care across regions.”

Ilias Zapantis, Deputy Head of Enterprise at UCLPartners said: “At UCLPartners, our mission is to find solutions for the health challenges our diverse communities are facing. To do this we are utilising research and testing innovations like Tympahealth to see if they are effective and can be successfully adopted across our geography. Together, working with our partners we will create measurable improvements in health, changing lives for the better.”