Back in early May, I posted a story featuring an interview with audiologist Dr. Marc Fagelson. A professor of audiology and speech-language pathology at East Tennessee State University, he went in-depth with me on tinnitus and how doctors are able to help patients cope with it rather than cure it. Dr. Fagelson, who’s part of the scientific advisory committee at the American Tinnitus Association, told me tinnitus is more annoying than adversarial in terms of one’s overall health, saying it’s “more or less harmless” and not going to hurt anyone. A lot of coping mechanisms and other therapies, he said, are psychological in nature because tinnitus excels at “mutually reinforcing mental health problems, emotional problems, [and] other kinds of functional problems.”
Along the lines of helping people better live with tinnitus, a few months ago I sat down with Chris Ellis to talk about his app called AudioCardio. On its website, the software, available on iOS and Android, is billed as “designed to strengthen hearing and relieve tinnitus.” It further describes the app as “evidence-based” and delivering “inaudible sound therapies designed to maintain and strengthen your hearing while providing relief from tinnitus by stimulating the cells inside your ear.”
As AudioCardio says, the app is like physical therapy for one’s ears.
Ellis, AudioCardio’s co-founder and CEO, explained the impetus for building the app lies in his time acting as caretaker for his grandfather. His grandfather suffered from cognitive decline and eventually died from complications of dementia. During his years as caregiver, Ellis would dive deep into researching ways to help his elder cope with dementia and figuring out what causes it and how to confront it. Ellis would come across several studies which found a correlation between dementia and untreated hearing loss, which resonated with him as his grandfather worked in the Air Force as a hydraulics engineer and, as such, “[worked] around very loud machines with large machines with very high pitched sounds.” Such prolonged exposure caused hearing loss and tinnitus, but Ellis said his grandfather “refused” to wear hearing aids or seek treatment. Ellis said he and his family equate their grandfather’s eventual cognitive degradation to his inability to hear things, as it caused “isolation, frustration and depression.” Ellis’ networking led him to connect with a scientist who was working on hearing loss; their collaboration is what birthed AudioCardio as it stands today.
“[We sought to] provide an easily accessible and affordable solution for people all around the world,” Ellis said.
On its website, AudioCardio explains the software works via a “clinically-proven” methodology called threshold sound conditioning, or TSC. The method, tested by the Stanford University School of Medicine, is described as a “non-invasive acoustic technology that is designed to maintain and restore your natural hearing ability and reduce the symptoms of tinnitus.” Ellis said AudioCardio “plays an inaudible and personalized sound repeatedly and continuously to stimulate a specific group of cells inside the ear.” The app works similarly to how Apple’s hearing aid test for AirPods Pro does, in that users are asked to locate to a quiet room with headphones to take the requisite hearing assessment. The assessment, Ellis told me, “calibrates that personalized and inaudible sound therapy.” At its core, AudioCardio provides background noise; users needn’t engage with the app much. The sounds are inaudible to the person, although Ellis said they could be perceivable by someone with better hearing. Over time, more of these ostensibly inaudible sounds will become noticeable at lower volumes—hence the therapy part—at which point users should recalibrate the app for their new aural levels. After enough therapy, driving down one’s “threshold of sound,” they would gain the ability to hear sounds at lower volumes.
Zooming out, Ellis told me he believes awareness of hearing health has grown “tremendously” in recent times, due in large part to the work done by larger companies like Apple, such as the the tinnitus study done with the University of Michigan released earlier this year. From its on data, Ellis said AudioCardio has gained in popularity with young people, telling me many young people cope with hearing loss as a result of lots of time wearing headphones and being in loud environments like concerts, crowded restaurants, and even rush hour traffic in New York City. For his own self, Ellis noted he tries to protect his long-term hearing health by carrying a set of earplugs with him everywhere he goes. Additionally, he tries to keep the volume of devices like his phone on the lower side. And of course, Ellis eats his own dog food by using AudioCardio on a daily basis. “Because it’s passive and inaudible, when I work out in the morning, I can go to AudioCardio, press Play [and] listen to the sound therapy and to music at the same time,” Ellis said of using AudioCardio himself. “I’ll do this routine and incorporate it into my daily activities.”
AudioCardio, Ellis told me, is targeted at “people with sensory neural hearing loss—that is, hearing loss caused by noise exposure and trauma, brain trauma, as well as other neurocognitive issues.” He added hearing loss often happens gradually from things like aging, so AudioCardio is able to positively affect the “majority of hearing loss” people experience.
When asked about feedback, Ellis said it has been “incredibly rewarding” for the team, particularly in context of AudioCardio being a startup. Obviously every company has good days and bad days, but Ellis emphasized his has received countless emails from customers who, prior to finding AudioCardio, were despondent in terms of finding a solution for their hearing health. The app has been “life-changing” in that way, with Ellis saying people are “very excited” and are always asking the team to add more frequencies and other functionality to AudioCardio.
“They’re definitely engaged,” Ellis said of AudioCardio’s users. “They’re definitely finding benefit to using our application—we know that by the inquiries and the support that we’re getting from our community.”
As to the future, Ellis returned to AudioCardio’s main mission. He said the company is going to keep pushing forward in “[providing] an easily accessible and affordable solution for people all over the world.” He conceded that although the United States is relatively rich in terms of access to specialists and the like, there are people living in rural parts of the country who can’t easily access healthcare. The presence of AudioCardio, then, could well be accessibility in another way, as Ellis said the app “[gives] them access to something that they can download anywhere, anytime is the first priority.” More broadly, Ellis envisions AudioCardio being a prime player in the areas of digital health and digital therapeutics, telling me they see other applications for its underlying technologies—even potentially to other kinds of devices which possibly could spur “[helping] individuals in a meaningful way.”
“We continue to do research. We look forward to the future,” Ellis said.