App comes to the aid of tinnitus sufferers
AWIDNES-BASED start up business has launched a digital healthcare product designed to help sufferers of tinnitus.
Aurio Limited was founded by tinnitus sufferer Jane McFerran, which has launched an app.
It is a life changing condition without a cure, with the British Tinnitus Association estimating that there are as many as six million people in the UK alone who suffer from it.
Tinnitus is not a disease or illness but a symptom generated within the auditory system.
The noise may be in one or both ears, or in the head, or it may be difficult to pinpoint its exact location.
The noise may be medium or high pitched.
There may be a single noise or two or more components.
The noise may be continuous or it may come and go.
Many sufferers of the condition struggle to come to terms with it or find ways to minimise the effects, with this being particularly true for Jane.
Early ideas for the Aurio app came when Jane tried a tinnitus masker on an MP3 player and then played music over the top of it.
The benefits included the tinnitus being masked to a degree with the harshness reduced and the music sounded better and clearer as low, the masker would block any harsh or irritating chords.
The Aurio app contains all the relevant maskers – white, brown, pink and purple – which are all recognised for blocking out unwelcome noise and allows users to load their own music via their phone’s playlist.
Aurio Limited received seed funding via Deepbridge Capi- tal.
Jane said: “Currently, the best prognosis for tinnitus sufferers is that they learn to live with the condition, or habituate to it. This can take anything up to 10 years and in my case it took 12 years for me to finally accept it, and realise, that it wasn’t going to kill me.
“So I started to look at ways that I could attempt to help myself.
“I found, through trial and error and many long hours searching the internet, that if I used a masker to block out my tinnitus, I could start to function better as it took my mind of the continuous noise.
“I love listening to music, but it never sounded the same after developing tinnitus as it was always muffled or the tinnitus ● would be set off by a certain chord or pitch in the song being played.
“Aurio was therefore born as a concept to help other sufferers both manage their tinnitus and also better be able to appreciate music, which for many of us is a passion taken away from us by the condition.”
Aurio is free to download from the Apple App Store now.