News

Hearing researchers at Nottingham BRC have joined a national data initiative to improve care for people with hearing loss.

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health Informatics Collaborative (HIC) for Hearing Health will enable researchers and clinicians to harness routinely collected patient data in research into hearing health.

The collaborative will be co-lead by UCLH BRC, in partnership with Nottingham and Manchester BRCs.

Its four priority areas of research will be:

- Exploring the effects of risk factors for hearing loss
- Identifying genetic causes of hearing loss
- Defining hearing loss sub-types
- Optimising benefit from individualised treatment strategies.

Mr Nish Mehta at UCLH is project lead for the HIC for Hearing Health, and the Hearing Health HIC is one theme of an over-arching HIC from the NIHR.

Themes within the NIHR HIC bring together data scientists and clinicians to help pool data from multiple NHS Trusts so that it can be used for research that will benefit patients, whilst doing this in a way that means patient data is protected and used correctly.

Dr Ruth Spriggs, Research Fellow at Nottingham BRC Hearing Theme, who co-authored a recent paper about the NIHR HIC, commented: “This pooling and reuse of data has great potential to accelerate hearing research and bring future benefits to people with hearing loss and related conditions.”

Dr Ian Wiggins, Senior Research Fellow at Nottingham BRC Hearing Theme, was a collaborator on the paper.

Read more about the creation of the NIHR HIC for Hearing Health and find out more about the NIHR HIC.