Somewhere on Earth: The Global Tech Podcast

Making America e-smart - Digitising public life in the US

March 05, 2024 Somewhere on Earth Episode 22
Making America e-smart - Digitising public life in the US
Somewhere on Earth: The Global Tech Podcast
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Somewhere on Earth: The Global Tech Podcast
Making America e-smart - Digitising public life in the US
Mar 05, 2024 Episode 22
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Digitising public life in the US – making America e-smart
Many governments and local authorities around the world have moved many, if not all their public services online, from filing tax returns to e-passports and food assistance schemes. However, the United States is lagging behind, with many civic services providing lengthy and user-unfriendly systems. CEO of Code for America, the nonprofit social organisation that’s bringing about much of this digital change in public life, Amanda Renteria explains why the US needs to make e-access to its public services easier.

Train your brain to overcome tinnitus with an app
A new app, called MindEar can reduce the impact of tinnitus in just a few weeks. It uses sound, relaxation and cognitive behaviour therapy which can be accessed through a smart phone. It’s estimated that up to one in four people may have the condition worldwide and the cause of this debilitating buzzing or ringing sound is still unknown. Current treatments are expensive and hard to come by. But this new chatbot app helps train your brain’s reaction to the sound, tuning out the tinnitus. Scientists from Australia, New Zealand, France and Belgium report the findings in the journal Frontiers in Audiology and Otology. The lead author and co-founder of MindEar app, Dr Fabrice Bardy, is on the show.

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell and the studio expert is Ghislaine Boddington.

More on this week's stories:
Code for America
Amanda Renteria
Cognitive behavioral therapy and telepsychology in tinnitus via an app 

Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AI
Can't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the Show.

Editor: Ania Lichtarowicz
Production Manager: Liz Tuohy
Recording and audio editing : Lansons | Team Farner

For new episodes, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or via this link:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2265960/supporters/new

Follow us on all the socials:

If you like Somewhere on Earth, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts

Contact us by email: hello@somewhereonearth.co
Send us a voice note
: via WhatsApp: +44 7486 329 484

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Digitising public life in the US – making America e-smart
Many governments and local authorities around the world have moved many, if not all their public services online, from filing tax returns to e-passports and food assistance schemes. However, the United States is lagging behind, with many civic services providing lengthy and user-unfriendly systems. CEO of Code for America, the nonprofit social organisation that’s bringing about much of this digital change in public life, Amanda Renteria explains why the US needs to make e-access to its public services easier.

Train your brain to overcome tinnitus with an app
A new app, called MindEar can reduce the impact of tinnitus in just a few weeks. It uses sound, relaxation and cognitive behaviour therapy which can be accessed through a smart phone. It’s estimated that up to one in four people may have the condition worldwide and the cause of this debilitating buzzing or ringing sound is still unknown. Current treatments are expensive and hard to come by. But this new chatbot app helps train your brain’s reaction to the sound, tuning out the tinnitus. Scientists from Australia, New Zealand, France and Belgium report the findings in the journal Frontiers in Audiology and Otology. The lead author and co-founder of MindEar app, Dr Fabrice Bardy, is on the show.

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell and the studio expert is Ghislaine Boddington.

More on this week's stories:
Code for America
Amanda Renteria
Cognitive behavioral therapy and telepsychology in tinnitus via an app 

Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AI
Can't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the Show.

Editor: Ania Lichtarowicz
Production Manager: Liz Tuohy
Recording and audio editing : Lansons | Team Farner

For new episodes, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or via this link:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2265960/supporters/new

Follow us on all the socials:

If you like Somewhere on Earth, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts

Contact us by email: hello@somewhereonearth.co
Send us a voice note
: via WhatsApp: +44 7486 329 484

Find a Story + Make it News = Change the World

00:00:00 Gareth Mitchell 

Hello everyone, it's Gareth Mitchell here again to bring you some Somewhere on Earth and it's Tuesday the 5th of March 2024 and I'm in London. We have well at least one voice from the others from across the pond. Anyway, from the United States joining us as you'll hear. 

00:00:25 Gareth Mitchell 

And another very important voice is expert Ghislaine Boddington. Here we are again, Ghislaine, how are things? You're OK. 

00:00:33 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yes, I'm good. Thank you, Gareth. Yes, and it's good to be back with you. And this looks like a really interesting show today. 

00:00:39 Gareth Mitchell 

We've got a lot to get through so well, I think we should.

00:00:42 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yes, let's go through it, yeah. 

00:00:42 Gareth Mitchell 

Do you reckon? All right, here it comes. 

00:00:50 Gareth Mitchell 

I'm coming up today. 

00:00:54 Gareth Mitchell 

From tackling child hunger to preparing younger people for work. We're talking to a leading light in the US to bring more government and public servicss online for everyone, whether young or old, and. 

00:01:07 

Ever get that 

00:01:07 Gareth Mitchell 

annoying, ringing or buzzing in your ears? I certainly do sometimes. And if that's you too. 

00:01:14 Gareth Mitchell 

Then help may be on its way thanks to an app that has. 

00:01:17 Gareth Mitchell 

Just been shown to alleviate the condition. 

00:01:20 Gareth Mitchell 

That’s all, right here on the Somewhere on Earth podcast. 

00:01:30 Gareth Mitchell 

Alright then. 

00:01:30 Gareth Mitchell 

Now the other day we heard all about digital government in Ukraine. So just go back to our very recent Ukraine special to hear that. And we heard there how Ukraine is really rather digital. Not quite as far forward as you may think is that giant of a country. Yes, the. 

00:01:48 Gareth Mitchell 

Yes, the land that landed a human on the moon and is home to Silicon Valley.  The United States, it turns out, still has. I mean, it's doing pretty well. Don't get me wrong, but it still has some way to go when it comes to connecting citizens and services online. So it's just as well that some very bright people are doing something about it. One such person is Amanda Renteria. 

00:02:09 Gareth Mitchell 

And she's the CEO of Code for America. Welcome to Somewhere on Earth. And Amanda well, obvious first question, what is Code for America? 

00:02:17 Gareth Mitchell 

OK. 

00:02:18 Amanda Renteria 

Well, first, it's just great to be with you. I appreciate this podcast and all that you share with the world out there. So Code for America is, what we do is we leverage technology to help governments deliver benefits more effectively or another way to say it is we're doing our best to modernise government for a new generation. 

00:02:39 Amanda Renteria 

Which, as you said, might sound like a simple thing as I'm calling in from Silicon Valley. But 

00:02:46 Amanda Renteria 

in fact, it's quite hard to. 

00:02:47 Amanda Renteria 

move these systems, these bureaucratic systems that have been in place for a very long time while technology is moving so quickly. 

00:02:55 Amanda Renteria 

And the demand and desire from people today are really that it should be digitised and so what we do is we help governments try and meet people where they are so they can get the benefits that they're eligible for. 

00:03:07 Gareth Mitchell 

And, I'm going to talk about forms here. Now, please don't hate me, Amanda, but I'm going to put it to you that a lot of people think that forms are really boring. 

00:03:15 Gareth Mitchell 

You know, we all hate filling in forms. Let's face it. And yet, and yet you can and your colleagues can attract 2000 attendees from 25 countries to a virtual event. 

00:03:27 Gareth Mitchell 

To kind of work on forms you know, to showcase the very best of governments working to make services accessible. So persuade that person listening, thinking, I really do not want to listen to a whole podcast about forms. Tell them why they should care. 

00:03:44 Amanda Renteria 

Well, listen, when you 

00:03:46 Amanda Renteria 

think about interactions with government. It actually starts with the form. It's like the front door of 

00:03:53 Amanda Renteria 

government and while you might not think you interact with government every day or all the time, you in fact do. Whether it's getting your driver's licence or it's a food assistance or it's that college loan that you need or its workforce programmes that you're interested in there, every interaction that you're interacting with, government starts with the form. 

00:04:14 Amanda Renteria 

And so when we actually did what we called FormFest, 

00:04:19 Amanda Renteria 

we could see quite quickly how governments around the world, government leaders around the world, recognise that this truly is the front door to government, and it really does set the stage for what is the relationship between people and how they interact with these big institutions that affect their lives in 

00:04:39 Amanda Renteria 

all kinds of ways. 

00:04:40 Amanda Renteria 

And so not only was our podcast on a boring topic, but the truth is the subject matter actually was affecting our lives every single day. And and when we got into the details, it wasn't boring. It was interesting and sometimes super frustrating, right? 

00:04:53 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, yeah, no, sure. Because I'm assuming that FormFest it's more, but it would include this, but it's more than saying, oh, maybe we should change the font or the background colour. And if I'm sure all those things matter. I don't mean to diminish even that, you know, so it's looking at the aesthetics, I suppose, but also. 

00:05:13 Gareth Mitchell 

Much more fundamentally, at that front door into government services, isn't it? 

00:05:17 Amanda Renteria 

That's right. It's not just about what the form is, it's how it asks the question. Will you feel good about it? Will you get the answer right or on the back end? Does it make you feel bad, like in some low income programmes some of the questions really do assume you're a criminal, as an example. The other part of it is, is the question 

00:05:37 Amanda Renteria 

Simple enough where we're reducing the errors when people apply, because if you ask the wrong question 

00:05:44 Amanda Renteria 

or ask a difficult question and somebody answers it incorrectly because it was confusing, that's a whole lot of work for governments on the back end to figure out how to get the right answers in order to get you the services they need. And so it's a lot more complicated than people realise. It's just not a check box of yes or no. It really is, how do you communicate well 

00:06:05 Amanda Renteria 

with people in their language, in their culture. 

00:06:10 Ghislaine Boddington 

And Amanda, I'm. I'm fascinated by this because as someone who's pretty dyslexic, I find forms really, really hard to do. And I'm always frustrated by, you know, opening up another form, even from the same company or university I'm working with, and it's a totally different format again. And I've got to feel like I'm learning from scratch all the time. Yeah. 

00:06:30 Ghislaine Boddington 

But I was wondering with your when you had your FormFest in 25 countries, were there any countries that particularly stood out as good example that we could, that you were looking to or that came up as real models that were doing well on this? 

00:06:45 Amanda Renteria 

So what came up was where there was centralization already in the system. So as an example, when agencies were more combined in certain countries, obviously their application process was also better because it meant as an example, instead of applying 9 different times for one thing, you can apply once, 

00:07:05 Amanda Renteria 

largely because those departments were combined. And So what we're trying to do at Code for America is we try and work with states, we try and work with agencies and say instead of applying 9 times, how about we figure out what all those questions are and apply once. 

00:07:20 Amanda Renteria 

And that's really been the focus. And so some governments have agencies that are combined, some governments are ahead and in fact, some have moved past the paper form, particularly when they're looking at tax forms. There's a lot of countries who do it a heck of a lot better than the United States when it comes to filing taxes where we have 

00:07:39 Amanda Renteria 

Bbth a federal process and a state 

00:07:41 Amanda Renteria 

process and you have credits that are entirely different. It's much more consolidated that we've seen across the country relative to the United States. And so it kind of depends and this is what we learned at the FormFest, is there a lot of countries who are doing certain things better and that we can learn from that we can share in. But all across, we all need to do better 

00:08:02 Amanda Renteriaa 

at integrated forms, simpler forms. 

00:08:05 Amanda Renteria 

And truly, a way of meeting people where there are, including, you mentioned dyslexia, including the opportunity to perhaps have an audio intake form which some folks are already working on. 

00:08:16 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yeah, that's wonderful. Yeah. 

00:08:18 Gareth Mitchell 

There is a an accessibility and a diversity issue there as well, and people who are neurodiverse, there are all kinds of 

00:08:24 Gareth Mitchell 

aspects that can make it easier for some, easier for some people than others to access government services at that all important front door so. 

00:08:32 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yes, absolutely. 

00:08:33 Ghislaine Boddington 

So the other thing I was really interested in reading up about your work was that there was quite a lot around the ‘a safety net innovation lab’. And I was wondering if you could tell us more about that because we've had quite a few discussions around innovation labs, but the safety net side of it, it seems like this is a 

00:08:54 Ghislaine Boddington 

very important area and and is that innovation lab for actually trying to create some new models. 

00:09:02 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, and and what is thesafety net as well? 

00:09:02 Amanda Renteria 

Yes, yes. So safety net in the United States is really all of your programmes around food assistance, healthcare, childcare programmes, housing assistance, energy assistance and so there's all these programmes that States and federal government has, and our idea was twofold. One was how can we make 

00:09:23 Amanda Renteria 

the process 

00:09:24 Amanda Renteria 

simpler, how can we help states integrate benefits across their different programmes, and to the extent possible, how can we actually auto fill some of these forms. So government has a lot of information, oftentimes states know the income levels. Instead of saying tell us what you might be 

00:09:44 Amanda Renteria 

eligible for, the idea is once you fill out one 

00:09:47 Amanda Renteria 

Form, through an application process you can say, hey, you're eligible for all these other five things. And so the opportunity to really bring that together was important. But I'll also say how we did it was also important. You'd imagine that in a state with or in a country with 50 states that folks worked together a lot. Well, state governments don't work together as much and  so we created a cohort 

00:10:09 Amanda Renteria 

model where we brought states together who were dealing with application intake problems, others who were dealing with how they communicate on renewals to people and we learned from that cohort modelling bringing states together, we were actually able to elevate best practises across those states. 

00:10:27 Amanda Renteria 

But also make it easier for any one of those states to try out new things because they were doing it together. And so so far it's been a really incredible hub because it's not only giving us some intelligence about what states are facing at any given time, but it's also helped us deploy best practises when we 

00:10:46 Amanda Renteria 

are able to gather them as a group and say here is the playbook for this brand new programme that's coming into play, or this policy that is changing at the federal level that's going to affect affect all states across the country. 

00:10:57 Gareth Mitchell 

So the innovation lab side of that then presumably is bringing a load of people together to really  

00:11:04 Gareth Mitchell 

to to make that work even better. Then you talk about bringing in insights from across different states. It's one advantage that you have in the United States that you know, you have a lot of stuff going on at state level. And then of course, the federal picture. So you, 

00:11:20 Gareth Mitchell 

I guess you, there's a lot of space for innovation. 

00:11:23 Amanda Renteria 

There is and it's and it's simple in that sense, right? Which is when you have a 50 state model where everyone's experimenting 

00:11:28 Amanda Renteria 

and they don't talk to each other, we're really missing the opportunity. And So what we thought about in our innovation lab is how can we speed up the lessons across 50 states, take the best of what's happening, share across the organisation and help with the technology that they need. So at Code for America, we can build the software itself if that's what the state needs. 

00:11:48 Amanda Renteria 

We can partner with the state itself, build together, or we can advise their innovation and engineering teams to build what the state needs. 

00:11:57 Amanda Renteria 

Our entire goal as a nonprofit is to make sure that the government does it. We don't want to become the vendor. We want governments to be able to do this work, to modernise on their own, which makes us a unique organisation in this world of technology where vendors are coming every day to the door to sell something new. We're actually trying to help 

00:12:17 Amanda Renteria 

government have the capacity and capability to do it themselves. 

00:12:21 Gareth Mitchell 

And thinking about some specific areas where you're helping people, for instance, reducing child hunger, isn't it, you know, electronic benefit transfers and improving those, you know how children, especially in poorer communities, can get access to food benefits, isn't it? 

00:12:36 Amanda Renteria 

That's exactly right. When the pandemic hit and every, all kids had to stay home, we were in a bit of a crisis across the country where how are we going to get services to kids who are no longer coming into the school? And that's really where several states came together and said, we need to figure out how do we get our data in place, 

00:12:56 Amanda Renteria 

how we actually digitally deliver services to to kids at home and that really started this model and thinking of how do you really digitise the delivery of benefits, what are all the things you need in the infrastructure of a of a state government to the actual delivery system itself. 

00:13:14 Amanda Renteria 

That has really changed the way people look at what government benefits they can access and how they  

00:13:20 Amanda Renteria 

should access them. 

00:13:21 Gareth Mitchell 

Can this be done in an even smarter way? I'm just thinking about if you have a child who's applying for benefits and you know through their parents that the system can somehow then detect algorithmically that therefore this is a family that is entitled to other benefits that may have other issues. Maybe it'll even pick up that 

00:13:42 Gareth Mitchell 

the children need some special kind of educational support. How far can this go? 

00:13:49 Amanda Renteria 

That's the vision. That's exactly the vision. And some states are farther than others in terms of when you apply for food assistance, it then talks about the childcare programmes or when you're applying for college application or college loans. It says, wait a second. Do you know about this food assistance programme? And so that is the vision and there are some states who have done a really great job, Minnesota 

00:14:13 Amanda Renteria 

being one of them, where they have actually combined nine different benefits. So when you apply, you're actually applying for 9 different benefits and at the end it tells you which ones you're eligible for or it links you up with those benefits directly. 

00:14:26 Amanda Renteria 

And that's the vision though, the vision is to be able to say you apply and ideally it tracks: Now you're in college. Now you're in the workforce. Now you just had a child. Now you want to buy a home. That's when government is really working with the community. And so our vision is exactly that, that over the course of your life, your interaction with government really follows you and empowers you along the way. 

00:14:48 Amanda Renteria 

On what's available to you, and also educating you, because many people don't actually know some of these programmes even exist. 

00:14:56 Amanda Renteria 

And that was really one of the things that we really pushed on in our programmes, is not only do you need to help people through an application process, but some of it is an education process to even know it exists. And when you have them applying, that's an opportunity to have that kind of relationship with people, to share what government does and what people are eligible for throughout the course of their life. 

00:15:17 Gareth Mitchell 

So Ghislaine, we started this conversation talking about good old forms and like how many questions should they have and how should the questions be phrased? Very important stuff. And now we've widened it right out to the bigger picture to improving standards of living and the fight, really part of the fight against poverty. 

00:15:34 Ghislaine Boddington 

Now I think it's amazing the joining of the dots that's happening, that you're managing, managing to enable both at the state level and then at the federal level. And I guess that bigger picture is really important because you just start to have a, a big umbrella overview of what's happening across the whole of the United States by this joining the dots 

00:15:55 Ghislaine Boddington 

from small local to the larger levels. So. So yeah, I think I'm really impressed by it. And I think the whole area of having 

00:16:05 Ghislaine Boddington 

a repository in a way where you like you said Amanda, you can fill in one form and you get told about many others. And that information's already being used because that is one of the frustrations, isn't it? Filling in the same stuff again and again and again and again? Yes. So, yes, yes. But to try and get this picture, this bigger picture, which ultimately 

00:16:25 Ghislaine Boddington 

I guess in the long run really does start to bridge the poverty divide, yeah. 

00:16:31 Amanda Renteria 

That's exactly right. And I mean one other way to think about this is there are so many policies that also change, right? How are we making sure that we're informing an entire population of the latest policies that are out there? And if you don't have a dynamic modern system, people really do get lost, whether it's climate change. 

00:16:51 Amanda Renteria 

Whether it's getting an alternative energy vehicle and so it's not just for figuring out how do we make sure we 

00:16:57 Amanda Renteria 

lift people up, 

00:16:58 Amanda Renteria 

but how do we keep a modern society really moving forward together and government 

00:17:04 Amanda Renteria 

programmes can do that if they can understand the implementation aspect of the policies they're passing in Congress. 

00:17:10 Gareth Mitchell 

All right. Well, there, we'll leave it. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. That's I got more out of that than I was expecting. I thought we were going to be talking about what font size you should have on a form. But seriously, I knew it'd be better than obviously, Amanda. What a brilliant booking. Thank you so much for joining us. That's Amanda Renteria of Code for  

00:17:30 Gareth Mitchell 

America, she's the CEO. And folks, there's a lot more that we're going to find out about Amanda and her fascinating background in politics, in industry. 

00:17:41 Gareth Mitchell 

She has a whole lot of stuff going on. I'm going to hear about it in the subscription version of this podcast. You should know about by now how to get there. But you know you have the subscription option through most podcatchers and do join us for some extra chat from Amanda because she's fascinating and you'll hear much more 

00:18:00 Gareth Mitchell 

about her. 

00:18:01 Gareth Mitchell 

But now let's talk about tinnitus, the condition that gives you ringing or buzzing in the ears. There's a one in four chance that you have it, and it can be very persistent and indeed very unpleasant. It can even lead to anxiety or depression in the most serious cases. But now a new cognitive behavioural therapy chat bot app can 

00:18:22 Gareth Mitchell 

be rather helpful. That's according to new research. The findings come from an international research team, and the research has shown that the app can effectively reduce the debilitating impact of tinnitus in just 

00:18:34 Gareth Mitchell 

a few weeks. Well producer Ania Lichtarowicz is right here on this side of the glass to tell us a bit more. So first tinnitus. How widespread is it? 

00:18:43 Ania Lichtarowicz 

The number of people who experience tinnitus globally is absolutely huge. One and a half million people in Australia, 4 million in the UK, 20 million in the USA have severe tinnitus. Now, figures aren't that readily available for the global south, so the issue is really significant. The condition affects hearing, mood, concentration, 

00:19:03 Ania Lichtarowicz 

sleep and in severe cases, causes anxiety and even depression. 

00:19:08 Ania Lichtarowicz 

But you know, what does it sound like? So please, if you are sensitive to ringing sounds or have tinnitus, please stop the podcast now, fast forward about 20 seconds as we will now play you the different sounds people can hear. Often constantly. Final warning. We are playing the sounds in 5 4 3 2 1. 

[tinnitus sounds] 

00:19:44 Ania Lichtarowicz 

Sorry, that noise is us putting us our our headphones back on because it was 

00:19:49 Amanda Renteria 

horrible. 

00:19:50 Ghislaine Boddington 

It's really horrible. 

00:19:53 Gareth Mitchell 

I'm glad you did the warning. 

00:19:54 Ania Lichtarowicz 

I hope everyone is back with us now. So what is the cure? Well, there isn't one, because we still don't know the cause of 

00:20:00 Ania Lichtarowicz 

tinnitus, it is still unknown. 

00:20:01 Gareth Mitchell 

But listening to this podcast, I think. 

00:20:03 Ania Lichtarowicz 

Yeah, after that little 15 second clip. It could be caused by damage to the inner ear by loud noises. So a lot of musicians do have it. This kills off cells in the cochlea, resulting in nerve damage and a lack of a real auditory signal to the brain creates this kind of internal sound. It can be caused by some cancer drugs, and even possibly 

00:20:23 Ania Lichtarowicz 

stress and tension from the jaw and neck. 

00:20:25 Gareth Mitchell 

So anyway, what do doctors do then, when a patient presents suffering with tinnitus? 

00:20:31 Ania Lichtarowicz 

While some patients are told there's nothing that 

00:20:33 Ania Lichtarowicz 

can be done. Others offer cognitive behaviour therapy which is effective and works in many cases, but these, but this needs to be delivered by a trained psychologist. Therefore, waiting times and the are long and the treatment can be very costly. So one audiologist Dr Fabrice Bardy, he thought that he could come up with something better. 

00:20:55 Fabrice Bardy 

More than the hearings is also this really this very personal relationship with the tinnitus and it's really where I felt that I did not have the tool to sort of like be able to help my patients. Fast forwarding,  so I spent five years in the in the clinic. 

00:21:10 Fabrice Bardy 

And then ten years, doing some neuroscience research. And in 2019 I saw that it could be a possibility to sort of like, develop a piece of technology, a digital programme, that we could deliver at scale and it could help audiologists to help their patient to sort of like 

00:21:30 Fabrice Bardy 

get access to methods which are clinically validated and some of them are like cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness, relaxation technique and and programme to to sleep better and also sound therapy. So my idea at this time was like, OK 

00:21:49 Fabrice Bardy 

there's definitely a problem. A lot of people are not currently receiving the care needed to regain control and to be able to tune out the tinnitus. Is it the possibility to develop something that could be accessible via a piece of technology which is nearly in everybody's pocket, which isn't just a mobile phone. 

00:22:07 Gareth Mitchell 

So that's audiologist Fabrice Bardy. 

00:22:09 Gareth Mitchell 

Ania, this then brings us to the MindEar app, isn't it? This is the one that's now being tested and is the subject of the research I mentioned in the introduction. 

00:22:19 Ania Lichtarowicz 

Well, yes, it's Doctor Bardy who is based at the University of Auckland, and he's actually the lead author of the study, which is published in the journal Frontiers in Audiology and Autology. 

00:22:28 Ania Lichtarowicz 

The clinical study of 30 people with tinnitus in that almost 2/3 of participants reported a clinically significant improvement when using the chat bot based app, and now there's a much larger clinical study that's about to get underway at University College Hospital in London. 

00:22:45 Gareth Mitchell 

Hmm. All right. So I've already said that I get a little bit of tinnitus now and then. Ghislaine how about you? 

00:22:52 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yes, I do. I do suffer 

00:22:55 Ghislaine Boddington 

slightly from tinnitus or tinnitus, but I do know several people who have it far more often and and a couple of people I know who got it all the time apparently. So but I downloaded the MindEar app to have a play with it and I have to say it's very well made and even before you have to pay the subscription you can learn a lot 

00:23:15 Ghislaine Boddington 

in that app from about the methods and what they will offer in a subscription version, but there's really a lot of videos, there's little chats and you just touch and ask more questions to learn more about the condition and the methods that can be used to relieve it. You know depending on which works for you. 

00:23:33 Ghislaine Boddington 

And they make it like a journey. You have to go, like, along a kind of a process. 1,2,3,4, and part of it's based on CBT, cognitive behavioural therapy, which is put forward as a very effective way for managing tinnitus because they believe that it's linked to negative thoughts and beliefs that we kind of loop in our head which 

00:23:53 Ghislaine Boddington 

causes anxiety and anger. 

00:23:56 Ghislaine Boddington 

And that links to cognitive behavioural therapy because it helps us to challenge and reframe thoughts to reduce the distress in our lives and therefore hopefully reduce the tinnitus. Yeah. Now that's one theory. As mentioned in the in the input to by Doctor Brady, I think it is bardy. Bardy. Yeah. 

00:24:16 Ghislaine Boddington 

The other sections also for breathing exercise helps with better sleep. 

00:24:22 Ghislaine Boddington 

There's some wonderful sound therapy stuff in there which I really liked. Mindfulness is some great meditation things with full body scans. Well, I'm happy to do all those anyway, and if that's going to possibly help with this by relaxing in some way, and you can choose layers of tracks you can add in a bird song or rain, for example, into one of the soundscapes. 

00:24:43 Ghislaine Boddington 

But I do think it's interesting. There's all these different layers, but I think one thing I read in the various research reports, et cetera, which seems to be to me to be pointing somewhere in a direction, 

00:24:55 Ghislaine Boddington 

is the neck the use of the neck and you see so much. Now we are all misusing our necks because we're constantly looking slightly down at our mobile phones. Yeah. And I know that that is being talked about like some of the this kind of hump back on the neck that's coming up in younger people or even in us as we get older from too much 

00:25:15 Ghislaine Boddington 

You know, not having the phone at eye level. 

00:25:17 Gareth Mitchell 

And and that links into tinnitus. 

00:25:19 Ghislaine Boddington 

Neck and head tension is one of the potential... 

00:25:23 Ghislaine Boddington 

It’s more about our anxieties, our distresses looping things in our brains which may be set off. You know these intensities in ourselves and that being linked to to also to neck and nerve strain as well. 

00:25:37 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, I've I mean a bit of a confession here. I sometimes get it if I've had a bit too much to drink. 

00:26:42 Ghislaine Boddington 

Oh, right. But there is a lot of information on that app. You know, you can download it and read a lot and watch videos before even having to subscribe to to help you learn whether you really would like to try it out. 

00:26:44 Gareth Mitchell 

It’s very good to have a service that gives you a lot for free before it makes you subscribe. By the way, you can subscribe to the extra on this podcast, by the way.  Your podcatcher should get you there and it’s an absolute bargain. Right now, back to the story.  That wasn’t bad was it. I am not on a commission to say that by the way. It’s just I slipped it in there.  Ania then, so why does all this work? 

00:26:17 Gareth Mitchell 

Well, before birth our brains start to filter out certain noises, things like blood rushing past our ears. As we age, we further filter out noises, so traffic, air conditioners, even the noise of sleeping next to someone, you know your husband, your wife, your other half. Some alarms though, like smoke detectors bypass this filter system and trigger a sense of alertness, especially for sounds linked to negative experiences. In tinnitus, that is when the brain hears a sound in the head with no external source, this causes distress, the brain fixates on this sound, training us to pay more attention to that sound in our head, triggering this alert response. The MindEar app helps people focus, reduce stress responses, as Ghislaine was saying, including reducing stress hormones, ultimately decreasing the brain’s focus on tinnitus. 

00:26:55 Gareth Mitchell 

Right now we know. Well thank you for bringing us that Ania. And that'll do for today.  Dear listener, please do let us know if you have tinnitus or if you do have it how you are coping with it or if you're coping with it. And especially if you've used that MindEar app, you can be a reviewer for it 

00:27:15 Gareth Mitchell 

if you like and just see if you agree or disagree with what you've heard there, but I think we could really get a good old talking point going around that whole area of tinnitus has given that it's so widespread. So if you do get tinnitus and what causes it in your case as well? 

00:27:29 Gareth Mitchell 

So do let us know our e-mail address is hello at Somewhere on Earth.co   On various social media we're quite searchable. Usually if you just search for something like somewhere on earth, the Global Tech podcast that should get you there. And of course we're on WhatsApp. It's code 44 for the UK 74 86 329 484. 

00:27:52 Gareth Mitchell 

Right. Fasten your seat belts. Let’s do the credits. Audio this week has been done by the excellent  Keziah Wenham Kenyan and Dylan Burton and we're here at Lansons Team Farner. The production manager is Liz Tuohy. Our editor, the producer sitting here right here in studio is Ania Lichtarowicz. You’ve heard expertise from Ghislaine Boddington. And generally a load of waffle from me Gareth Mitchell. 

00:28:14 Gareth Mitchell 

Thanks for being there folks, and stand by for the subscription version, otherwise see you next week. Bye Bye. 

ENDS 

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