In Series 2 Episode 6 of the Health Points podcast Ben and Pete welcome Amanda Philpott, the CEO and co-founder of Ear Gym, to discuss her background in healthcare and the need for a solution to address hearing loss. Amanda was inspired to start Ear Gym after learning about the global prevalence of unaddressed hearing loss and its correlation with social isolation, mild cognitive impairment, and dementia.
She describes Ear Gym as an app that aims to make hearing health aspirational and accessible through auditory training using gamification. The goal is to improve overall hearing capacity and potentially slow down the rate of decline in hearing. Initial data from beta testing showed a 14% improvement in participants' hearing.
The primary target audience is individuals aged 45 to 65 who are starting to experience hearing decline. This age group is chosen due to the economic impact of hearing loss and their willingness to address their health. However, there is also interest from younger adults (18-30) who are curious about their hearing.
The company aims to make the product enjoyable and emotionally safe through gamification, but they face challenges in finding the right balance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. They have developed games such as audio match three, sound location recognition, and a game called "Busy Barista" that simulates taking orders in different environments like train stations or cafes. Short bursts of gameplay are important for user engagement, and lessons learned from other apps like Duolingo's leaderboard system have influenced their approach.
Amanda discusses how they reached 170,000 people completing their game and the importance of organizing their database. They also talk about their marketing strategies to raise awareness about hearing health.
They believe that gamification has great potential in making health assessment and diagnosis more accessible. Overall, they see gamification as an exciting challenge with huge potential in improving population health.
You can listen to this episode below:
Outline:
- Chapter 1: Introduction to Health Points (00:07-00:17)
- Ben and Pete introduce the episode and the topic of gamification and health
- Chapter 2: Background and Journey to Ear Gym (00:44-05:24)
- Ben asks about the background and journey of becoming co-founder and CEO of Ear Gym
- Ben mentions being inspired by a speaker at Zinc, Jessel Vishnorum, who spoke about hearing loss on a global scale
- The impact of hearing loss on later life is discussed
- Chapter 3: User Experience and Journey with Ear Gym (05:24-12:13)
- Ben asks about the user experience and journey of using Ear Gym
- The team conducted a literature review to understand the science around hearing loss and cognitive function
- The goal is to build an app that contributes to the science and uses gamification to engage users
- The period of time for gathering data and using the app is discussed
- The team is working on normalizing and regulating target sounds against ambient sounds
- The initial results of the beta product show a 14% improvement
- Chapter 4: Building RCTs and Qualitative Changes (12:37-15:22)
- The team is working on building randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to contribute to the field of science
- The qualitative change in people's lives through improved hearing is discussed
- Translating the improvement percentage into decibels and safe listening contexts is mentioned
- Chapter 5: Audience Segmentation (15:22-19:39)
- The core audience for Ear Gym's immersive auditory training is identified as aged 35 to 65, specifically 45 to 65
- Different segments, including young people and women interested in dementia research, are discussed
- Chapter 6: Challenges of Gamification and Enjoyability (19:39-23:26)
- The challenge of using gamification language in a health product is mentioned
- Users want to know the impact of the app rather than just the enjoyment factor
- Finding the right balance between gamification and health impact is a challenge
- Chapter 7: Testing Enjoyability and Cost Considerations (25:25-26:55)
- Audible helped with testing enjoyability using immersive audio
- The cost of producing immersive audio content is a challenge for the startup
- Locating sounds amongst background sounds and the transferability to real-life situations is discussed
- Chapter 8: Routine and Data Organization (28:12-32:22)
- The importance of routine and measuring routine as a competitive element is mentioned
- Data organization and infrastructure considerations are discussed for handling a large dataset
- The app's compatibility with iOS and Android is emphasized
- Chapter 9: Personal Testimonial and Future Plans (32:22-34:04)
- A personal testimonial about the positive effects of Ear Gym in a loud environment is shared
- The focus for the next twelve months is on finding a way to market and gaining traction through trials
- The long-term vision for Ear Gym as a B2B or B2B2C solution is discussed
- Chapter 10: Future of Health Gamification (36:37-38:48)
- The potential for health gamification in population health on a national, continental, and global scale is discussed
- The challenge of conducting cognitive diagnoses online is mentioned
- Chapter 11: Conclusion (38:48-39:27)
- Amanda is thanked for her insights on the problem of hearing loss
Episode Transcript:
Ben
Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Health Points, where we talk about anything and everything, gamification and health. I'm Ben and here today with me is my co host, Pete.
Pete
Hi, everyone.
Ben
And joining both of us today, we have Amanda Philpott, who is an ex NHS CEO and population health strategy specialist. She is the CEO and co founder of Ear Gym, after the first hand experience of unaddressed hearing loss in her family. Amanda, it's great to have you on the show today.
Amanda
Hi, Ben, thanks very much for having me.
Ben
So it'd be great to start about your background and journey to becoming co founder and CEO of Ear Gym.
Amanda
Sure. So I should just say, I'm a 56 year old woman, so, fairly unusual in a tech startup. I grew up in the Midlands in the UK as the youngest child of a family of four, which is kind of relevant when it comes to family dynamics and dementia. Studied psychology and sociology at college and I have an MBA. And then if I just talk about my NHS, just to set the context. I joined the NHS in 1991 as an information analyst, and then I took a general management career journey spanning about 30 years through a series of operational and strategic roles in hospitals and primary care and community. And during that career, I held a role in public health, where I really started to understand the importance of the social determinants of health and well being.
Amanda
And that really heavily influenced my choice to become a chief exec of NHS population health commissioning organizations. And I was in London and Sussex for the last eight years or so, and I sat on a number of boards influencing local, regional and national policy until I left in 2019.
Ben
And when you left in 2019, was that direct response to start the journey into ear gym?
Amanda
Yeah. So in my last role in the NHS, I was working on the industrial challenge, I don't know if you remember that, and I was working on it with the Sussex universities and local businesses and I became really interested in the opportunity to influence prevention of ill health from a different perspective. And then there was yet another reorganization in the NHS. And as it kicked off, I realized that I really needed to change. And I was encouraged to apply for the zinc venture capital accelerator. And they'd just launched their mission to build tech startups that could improve quality of later life for 100 million older people. So I thought I'd have a go at improving population health by starting from scratch. And luckily, I was accepted onto that.
Pete
Brilliant.
Ben
No, I know the zinc program really well and there's been some great individuals, but also startups that come out of it as a project program in that case, what were the events that led you to realizing there was a need for ear gym and there was a problem that was unsolved in this area?
Amanda
Yeah. During the induction month at Zinc, one of the speakers, I had some great speakers, one of the speakers was a woman called Jessel Vishnorum, who was at the Royal National Institute for the death at the time. And I do consider myself to have a lot of good knowledge about population health. And she came and spoke about the massive global scale of hearing loss, of unaddressed hearing loss and the increasing risk. So that's 430,000,000 people at the moment living with hearing loss, adults, I should say, plus 1.1 billion living with mild hearing loss. And I was completely unaware of this. Another 1.1 billion younger people aged twelve to 35 at risk of hearing loss because of what we would call unsafe listening practices. So use of headphones, which of course has grown exponentially really, since the early two thousand and ten s.
Amanda
And so I also didn't know about the correlation between hearing loss, social isolation, mild cognitive impairment and dementia. And hearing loss is in fact the biggest amenable factor in dementia. And at 8% of all dementias and the size and scale of that, really the only solution at the moment is hearing aids, which are technically great for the most part, but also very expensive and difficult to access for a lot of people. So I thought that has to be an area to go at it to learn about and to see if we can come up with a solution that enables caring for our hearing to become both aspirational and accessible. And whilst I was on zinc, I met Andy Shanks, who's my co founder. And Andy is a digital product specialist and also a retired dj.
Amanda
And as part of my early learning around, whilst I was on zinc, we did some hearing checks and both of us realized that we're living with moderate hearing loss. And in fact, I wear hearing aids now and then. We also reflected on the impact of hearing loss on later life. And both of our sets of parents have ignored their hearing loss for decades, as people do. And unfortunately, my father's living with dementia now and we see the signs of cognitive impact, which may or may not be causative, but it's definitely there. And we thought, let's build ear gym, let's really try to tackle this massive issue.
Ben
So in that case, what is the concept of ear gym? What has the user experience and journey of using and engaging with ear gym?
Amanda
Yeah, so the concept of ear gym, as I said, we wanted to build something that made hearing health aspirational and accessible. So we know that even when people start to recognize their own hearing loss, which actually takes a bit of time anyway, because it's not like sight, where you know whether or not you can read the thing that you used to read, or you can read something that somebody you know, it's like the number plate test in a driving test. With hearing loss, it tends to be gradual. And you don't know what you can't hear. You can hear five birds in the garden, you don't know that you're not hearing another 20 until whoever you live with or somebody is complaining about the television being too loud, or you're finding social spaces too uncomfortable, bars and cafes and things, and you start to withdraw.
Amanda
So we thought even with all of those impacts, it then takes us about ten years, once we recognize our own hearing loss, to do anything about it. And we also know the industry data is that the average age of a first time wearer of hearing aids is 75. Well, they've already been living with the impact of a decline in hearing for decades, really, by then. So we thought the first problem is to raise awareness of our own hearing health and to make people aware that they should check their hearing and start to think about how they might prevent. We almost. One of our first decisions was to say, for ear gym, the branding is love your hearing. So we wanted to build something that was aspirational and accessible. And for accessible, that meant affordable and something that we can do in our own homes.
Amanda
So we deliberately aimed at a product that people could use their own smartphones and their own headphones and do it at their own convenience. And those were guiding principles. And then, I guess, in terms of the product itself, we did a literature review of 3000 papers to understand and learn about the science around hearing loss and its correlation with cognitive function. We have some superb board advisors from the UCLA Institute and from the Imperial College of Design who've been with us through the whole journey, guiding us from that expert perspective about things to think about and things to not. And within that, there's research, I guess I pick out whitten et al back in 2017, that showed that auditory training can improve your overall hearing capacity by up to 25%.
Amanda
So what we mean by that, or the way that I understand it, and the way that we describe it to people, when we describe ear gin, is if you think of your hearing in two parts, so you've got the sensory neural aspect, your ears, and the bit that comes through your ear, into your inner ear, and through your middle ear and into your inner ear, that takes in the sound, but then you have to apply meaning to it. And so if you go back to early man and you think about the sounds in the forest, is that the wild boar that's food, that is your survival? Or is it the bear that is coming to eat you? You have to apply meaning to the same sound in order to know your response.
Amanda
So if you think about ear gym is if you think about the sensory neural aspect as your hardware, the auditory processing is your software. And what earjim is trying to do is enable you to effectively practice listening, to do that auditory training to improve your overall hearing capacity. And we hope, therefore, over time, to stay the rate of decline in your hearing. And there's lots of science about that. We need to find the data, and at the moment, hearing data is really difficult to come by because of that thing about people not being aware of their hearing. So we wanted to build an app that would contribute to the science.
Amanda
So we wanted to use gamification to get people to do audio games so that we can gather audio data and see the impact on hearing and cognition over time for a large enough population to be able to contribute that data to this really important field of research.
Pete
So that's really interesting, apart from the fact that I've just downloaded it while you were speaking, because I have mild hearing loss, and I like the idea of being able to train myself to have better hearing. How long a period of time are you thinking of gathering the data for and having people use the app?
Amanda
Well, what we know is you can see an improvement over eight weeks. So we did that with hearing training for six or seven minutes, for three or four times a week. So it's not massively intensive. But what we also know is that the training that we based ear gym on, we've achieved measurable improvement of around 14% using the hear who test, which is digital triplets test. So, obviously, we're developing our product, and Whiton's study was undertaken in lab based conditions and using white noise, and of course, for enjoyability. What we've been doing is putting target sounds against, not against white noise, because it's not that pleasant to listen to. So we use cafe environment, or outdoor environment, or motor environment, whatever.
Amanda
So we are building our product and working with our chief scientist to make sure that we are able to normalize and regulate our target sounds against our ambient sounds, so that we can really contribute to the science. So when you talk about how long do we need to collect data for what we would like to do is collect data over decades, but we know that the time for improvement is between four and eight weeks in the first instance. What we also know from whitten is that when people stopped training, their hearing declined again. Their improvement declined back to the previous level. So we want people not to stop training, but they will reach a position where actually their hearing is not going to improve that much more, but then we want them to maintain it.
Amanda
And part of our research is to work out over time, how often do you need to train to improve? And then when you've secured that improvement, how often do you need to train to maintain that improvement? And then what we would like to do over the years to come is understand, is to do that research through formal randomized control trials so that we can see the difference between people undertaking the training and people not undertaking the training.
Ben
That improvement within four to eight weeks. Are you seeing a reflection of what has been published previously of a 25% improvement so far within your data?
Amanda
We measured 14% with our beta product. And so we've been working to improve our mvp and then to improve our training underneath that. And we're using our data to improve our training because, as I said, we're using some slightly different elements insofar as it's remote, it's not standardized in a lab, and we're using ambient sound rather than white noise. So we're tweaking our training as we go. But we felt it was really good to get that kind of feedback on our beta project using the here who. The other thing that we're doing, of course, with the support of UkRi design for aging grant funding and the Alzheimer's Society has also very helpfully grant funded us is to start to build rcts.
Amanda
So we've just finished a pilot RCT, which was about the design of an RCT to make sure that as we go forward, we're able to really properly contribute to the field of science.
Ben
And 14% as a quantitative, is that a meaningful difference in people? And I guess also anecdotally, what is a qualitative change in people's lives by experiencing that change in their hearing?
Amanda
Yeah, that's a really good question. We have struggled with a meaningful, with translating what 14% means, or we're starting to translate it into decibels. So our chief scientist, Sharon Koifman, who's a hearing engineer and audiologist by background, would say that if you're doing lab based research, any academic would be really absolutely delighted with the two decibel improvement and so we're now starting, now that we're able to undertake more serious research. We're starting to translate it into decibels. And then you can start to apply that to a sort of an index of normal speech being at 65 db, or a concert being at 110 to 120 db. And you can start to talk about safe listening in that context and the impact.
Amanda
So, for example, a pair of gig plugs will normally take down the db level from between ten and 17 db, which can increase the period of safe listening from say 15 minutes to 2 hours in a loud environment. And so we are, rather than me sort of giving you a glib answer now, I'd say that what we're trying to do is translate our findings into a measure that makes sense to ordinary people, to people who are not experts in hearing, so that it can give us a clue about the level of safe hearing and about environments in which we'll feel comfortable listening.
Ben
In that case, who are the people that earjim is aimed at? Is it anyone who may be experienced or think they could be, or not even aware they're experiencing change in. Because what you've described then about gigs, and I'm thinking more of the younger adults, twenty s, thirty s, forty s, who may be going to festivals and gigs more regularly than people in their. Who are you aiming a GM at?
Amanda
Yeah, we've identified three audiences, really, and the way that we've segmented them is our core audience for our immersive auditory training are aged 35 to 65 or 45 to 65, really. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that they're starting to experience hearing decline. One in two of them will be starting to experience hearing decline. The other is that I think at that age, and I may have mentioned I'm in my early fifty s and I'm aware that sort of it was in my realize that I probably wouldn't live forever. And you start to experience your parents aging and you start to experience the health conditions of later life. And I think we realize that in that younger age group you've got a level of immortality that doesn't necessarily make you pay attention to things like hearing and things.
Amanda
But also the economic impact of hearing loss is 25 billion per annum in the UK and over 981,000,000,000 per annum, dollars per annum globally. And that's because of stress and lost productivity and early retirement. So there is an enormous economic impact for individuals, organizations, governments across the world. And so to maintain people in work, in productive lives, whether or not that's paid or unpaid, if we can target that group of people, 45 to 65, so in the second half of their careers, then we can have a material impact, not only socially but also economically. That's our target audience, 45 to 65 year olds. But we know from, we put out an earage test, which is essentially a frequency slider. So we play a frequency and you slide your finger along and you hit pause when you cannot hear the sound anymore.
Amanda
And it gives you an indicative your age. Now, that's not a scientific test, but it's a really good indicator. And we've had over 170,000 people do that. And that has an enormous number of younger people aged anywhere from 18 to 25, 30. Probably 70% of the people doing that because they're curious about their hearing. And what's been interesting for us is in taking away the barrier of having to spend several minutes checking your hearing or going into a face to face audiology appointment in being able to just do a quick check, the amount of interest from younger people is really interesting. And from there, of course, we know that it's really important to signpost them to advice and guidance on looking after their hearing for life.
Amanda
So we do, although it's not a core part of the aging product, we're building a shop on our website and we're building relationships with people who do ear protection, whether or not that's earplugs or ear defenders or anything else, because that's a really important part of looking after your hearing if you're in those layout environments. But so we would call those testers, and then we would have our trainers, which I've talked about, and then there's a higher intensity part of the market, which is people who, when they get into our more detailed test, they might do the frequency slightly, the earage check, but then we have the digital triplets test built in house, which is 23 sets of numbers in noise. And that is a very reliable test. In fact, that is the hear who.
Amanda
It's built on the same lines as the hear who test, and we're licensed to use it as well. And when people do that, they get a really good indication of how their hearing is. And we can say to them, actually, the outcome of your hearing test means that maybe we can help you think about getting to a face to face audiology appointment for a proper pure tone audiometry assessment and more detailed examination and consideration of solutions like hearing aids. And that means that we are seeking to build relationships with hearing aid suppliers, because clearly raising awareness and helping people to the right solutions is something that we want to build good pathways there.
Pete
Now, I'm interested with these different segments, like talking about the young people who are curious to know more about the gamification and the games that you're playing with people's hearing. And are you finding you need to design them differently for your different segments?
Amanda
Yeah, it's a really good challenge. It's a really difficult challenge for us. So when were thinking about gamification, were thinking about taking away the fear of hearing loss, fear of perceived frailty, fear of perceived disability. And we wanted people to feel sort of safe, emotionally safe, around addressing their hearing. And that's why went for gamification. And also what we know from our research is that when you look at games, who plays those matched three games, the big colorful match three, the successful games like Candy Crush and what have you, they tend to be the age group of around 45 to 65. There's quite a lot of women playing those games. And we did some testing thinking that gaming would be the solution.
Amanda
And what we found in a b message testing was that women in that age group, we had a high 6% click through rate when were emphasizing the contribution to research around dementia. So play these games, give your data, contribute to research, and women were highly motivated there. And guys in that age group tended to click through when the messaging was train your hearing, go to the gym and train your hearing, and more about personal control and the ability to self manage one's own hearing.
Amanda
So what we then built on, we built this user led design panel who have a range of characteristics and what we have got back not only from that panel of eleven people who work with us in our design process throughout, but also from general user feedback is actually the gamification is important for the enjoyability, but the language of gamification is actually quite a challenge when it comes to a health product, because what our users want to know is, what is the impact? And is my health improving? And so we're having to learn as we go about how to get the balance right between that, in that design process, between gamification for enjoyment and feedback that motivates people to want to continue to do it because it's having a positive impact on their overall health and well being.
Pete
So that's really interesting. What have you learned so far in that balance?
Amanda
Well, we're having an interesting debate at the moment about how, if you think about people will, our experience is that people will address and look after their own health when they identify their intrinsic motivators. When you look at the, I don't know if you know the diabetes program, I think it's Desmond. It might be called something else now in the NHS, but how you get people to stop smoking or address their habits for type two diabetes or asthma and what have you're looking at intrinsic motivators. One of the risks with gamification is that we move people towards extrinsic motivators and streaks and runs and leaderboards.
Amanda
And unless we keep that motivation, unless we keep evolving our gamification approach so that we keep that stimulation and motivation going, we're conscious of the need to make sure that we don't accidentally pivot people away from the intrinsic motivator to the extrinsic motivator. And so that's one of our challenges. I think it's an interesting challenge. I don't think it's a blocker. I think it's just a really interesting challenge for saying, we will never be at the point of Gan, we've got this, we've done it. It's nailed. Because we will have to keep making sure that we understand how motivation evolves and how that works for our different segments that we've talked about.
Amanda
And with that, of course, we have been good, have the good fortune to have a behavioral scientist on our board of advisors who we do make sure that we're trying to learn from other more well developed long term conditions where approaches are in their coronary heart disease, et cetera, so that we can try to apply them as we evolve our product internally.
Ben
I think that was a brilliant answer. I completely agree. The balance between intrusive and extrinsic motivations. And we've had debates on health points and at conferences around kind of is there real issues of gamification? Because actually it removes the true motivation for improving health for the purpose of living a healthier life, as opposed to whatever that game mechanic is. In that case, what have you explored in your design process of what types of game mechanics, what features around gamification that you've been involving, including an ear gym? And has there been a huge evolution, even over the last couple of years, in what you're developing and delivering to create these fun and engaging experiences?
Amanda
Yeah, we started off thinking, well, let's have a look at what the big games are. So we researched, we did all the research of what people download and play at the moment, how often they play. And there's some really surprising, well, for us, surprising data in there. But that led us towards match three type games, I have to say, because we're a tech startup, one of the reasons that we didn't go down the storytelling game, because our pilot actually, and oh gosh, way back when, right back at the start, were really lucky. Audible helped us record some five minute immersive audible stories, not audible audio stories, just so that we could test enjoyability. When you're doing that very early user testing, will people like listening to immersive audio on their headphones in short bursts? And we got really positive qualitative feedback.
Amanda
But as a tech startup, we realized very quickly that when you're talking about hiring studios, hiring actors, getting directors, getting scripted, that to do that and keep a wealth of material coming through was way too expensive for us. So we looked at, well, how can we build product that we can once we've got the core mechanics in place and the interface right, that we can build on many layers and maintain the interest, which made us think about early, our early games, were thinking about match three and stuff like that, which has that potential much more than always creating original material as we've done that, actually, we found that sound recognition has been very appealing, and also that our users like things that they can understand the relationship and the transferability to real life. So we have three games up at the moment.
Amanda
One is an audio match three, so you're doing pitch or reverb or whatever. One is locating sounds amongst background sounds. So, for example, in the jungle and what have you. But the most popular game, I happen to like that one best. But the most popular game from our user perspective is one that we call busy barista, which is about operating as a barista and taking orders of increasing complexity and increasing in different environments. But people can recognize those environments. Are they a train station, are they in a cafe, are they in a park? And because people recognize, they do go out and order coffees, and they are doing that in noisy environments, they can understand the transferability to real life. And that has guided our future plans for our future games.
Amanda
The ability to play in short bursts is important, I think, although we have some people who play for a lot, a really long time, but the ability to play in short bursts, so in between things, or maybe on a coffee break, has guided us and other things that we learn about. If you look at, we talk about what do we use and what do we pay for, what do we value on all of our apps as a team? And if I use duolingo as an example, one of the improvements that they've done recently, and I've used Duolingo for a long time.
Amanda
The thing that has made me go back to it and really enjoy it this time around is that I now understand that their leaderboards are based on comparing people based on the number of times they play, rather than their competence in a given language. So it's about the I play five times a week. My rate of improvement in those five times influences my position on the leaderboard, not my comparative performance to somebody else's language learning. And the same needs to apply for us in hearing health. We need people to be thoughtful about their own hearing, their baseline, the impact on their life, and the actions they can take, not what somebody else can do or how they compare to somebody else. Competitive hearing doesn't make much sense in that way, but rates of improvement and effort. Routine.
Amanda
Measuring routine as a competitive element, we've seen is a really good initiative by Duolingo, and we are also getting that feedback. And so that kind of learning has been very helpful for us about where is the competition and where does the competition motivate? Where does the competition, where does it risk being a demotivator?
Ben
Fascinating. The one thing I want to go back to as well, as you mentioned, you had 170,000 people into the data set until they completed the assessment. That's a phenomenal number. What it reminds me of, in a way, is one of our series one guests, Michael, who created the Sea hero quest game around wayfinding and understanding of navigation for people who were going into the cognitive decline and Alzheimer's and ended up having over a million people play the game, and a data set far too big to deal with. One, is 170,000 too many for your data sets in terms of what you're expecting. Two, how did he get to 170,000 people completing it? Because I think that's a fantastic figure. How did he get there?
Amanda
Yeah, well, there's two things going on there. We got there through using YouTube, and since we started it on YouTube, we've built it into our app. So it's on our app. We initially found the technology quite difficult to put into the app early on, so that's why we started with YouTube. But also YouTube is a handy channel for that sort of thing. So our database doesn't reflect the 170,000, although it reflects a lot. It doesn't reflect all of it. But Andy has been really good. As the chief product officer. He, from the off, said, if we're going to do data, we have to organize. All of our software has to talk in this way.
Amanda
And we have to be able to go out on both iOS android, and we have to build in this language and do this so that we can organize our database and absorb data and buy bigger data warehousing, I guess as we grow. So we have always had in mind that we will build a massive database and we're on that journey. We're not there yet. That said, we've gone over 11,000 downloads and we have all of that data, and we collect a lot of data in that way in terms of frequency of gameplay and what sounds can be heard, how many errors in the thing, what's the impact to their tests and things. How did we reach 170,000? Because we've been thoughtful from the beginning about what is the messaging around hearing health that will motivate people to care for their hearing.
Amanda
We have run social media messaging for a long time, and so we are on LinkedIn and Twitter and insta and various channels saying to people, do you know how your hearing is? What's your hearing age? This is a 32nd check. And because it's a short check and people can click on it and do it, how do you compare to your friends? It seems to have some takeup and that's good. And for us it's just getting people to be interested in something that we hope that they will value, because it's useful to know even one of my family, who he's 31, because of me going on and on about ear gym, as one does when you're building a startup. He came home a week or two ago and said, look, here's my gig plugs and they're attached in my keyring.
Amanda
They're on my keyring because I do not need hearing aids at this point, but I'm not going to get to that position. So I want you to know that I am wearing these. I wear these all the time. And in fact, he then reported that he'd been lives in London, been in the busy pub. He was interested in how it affected his experience of the evening and how much more comfortable he found it, but also how it took the, if you like, the distortion out of the conversation in such a loud environment, and that he found his cognitive, he was much less tired from the listening effort, which is almost exactly what we want people to say, except I haven't coached him. That was a private conversation, if you like.
Ben
In that case, what's next for ear? Jim, where do you see the next twelve months going?
Amanda
Well, the place we're at the moment, I've talked a lot about, we're amongst the first to market in this. Well, probably first to market in terms of this immersive auditory training, and we know then that you have to warm up the market, raise awareness and get people to want your product. So I talked at the beginning about being aspirational. We are finding our way to market. So we have trials set up with over 25 companies who are looking, who are either companies who are doing employee health and wellbeing internally, or platforms that provide employee health and wellbeing. And that has a potential reach of 30 million people. And the question is, how do we get takeup within that, within those trials, the b to C route.
Amanda
And we are also obviously looking at the b, two B route, and health insurance and what have you, and the relationship with hearing aid companies, all of those commercial routes. We're in that stage. And I think, I suspect that, well, I know that many startups go through this phase, but just getting past that hurdle of proving that we can monetize Eogen. And so our next twelve months is making sure that we prove it and really accelerate the route to market, because we have a very clear plan for the next decade of our product development based on our data set. And we started with our IP process 18 months, two years ago. We're a long way down that road, so we know where we need to go, but we also recognize and respect, investors need to be confident that we can monetize.
Amanda
And so we have a lot of interest, we have a lot of grant funding, we're ticking a lot of good boxes, and this is our focus now.
Ben
And do you have a plan then in the future? Are you gaming for the direct to consumer option, which you have now on the website, do you think is more in the future, commissioning at large scale?
Amanda
No, we think that the future is in b to B and b to C, because we recognize that actually the benefit of people staying connected, the benefit of people staying productive, the benefit of deferring, of the potential of deferring cognitive decline, they are all huge benefits to the economy and to government and to industry. And that's where we think this is a health benefit. This is a real material benefit to society, and we think that is a b to B or a b to C solution. And whilst we'll keep the b to c channel open, it's not our first route.
Ben
I think I completely agree with you in terms of what the strategy is commercially. I think I'll be doing exactly the same as a final question from me, Amanda, is where do you see the future of health gamification going? Broadly, what does the next 510 years look like, do you think, on the national, continental, global stage for health gamification in population health?
Amanda
Well, I think the great opportunity of gamification in health is that it lowers the boundaries to entry, so it allows more people to consider and explore the things that they are concerned about in environments, which I use the phrase emotionally safe in a discrete way that allows them to explore their concerns and understand their health, perhaps without being exposed to other people's judgment or certainty sometimes. So I think gamification can make all of that feel a little bit less scary. We think that where gamification is going is it will help us to make more accessible self administered assessment and diagnosis, as well as rehabilitation solutions. I think there's some very interesting challenges there. We hope to be able to get to a point, and I think many companies are getting to the point where you can do different diagnoses for different conditions online already.
Amanda
I think there's a really interesting challenge around how you do cognitive diagnoses online in a safe and supportive way. And we would want to contribute to that sort of emerging knowledge base without leaping into it. But I think objective based checklist systems, you can use games to use games, use quantification in their scoring systems, and we can apply that to education and health. I think we would describe it, one of my team, Jay, described it as the accomplishment dopamine, applying that feeling of the mastery of our health through gamification. So we think it has huge potential. But as I said before, we're mindful of making sure that we manage the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. And that makes it a really exciting challenge, doesn't it?
Ben
I think it's a properly exciting challenge, indeed. Amanda, it's been great having you on today's episode to look at the size and scale of a problem of hearing loss, which affects billions of people worldwide. That created your problem, which resulted in you looking at how to create that solution, building a gamified solution based on the science and research, but then also to gather more data to further contribute to that science and research and the role of games in assessing people's hearings to guide them on the journey of better hearing while treading that balance of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in gamification. Amanda, it's been fantastic to have on the show today.
Amanda
Absolute pleasure. It's been great to talk to you both. Thank you.
Pete
It's been really interesting and I've got some listening to do.