Digital Hearing Aids
Letter from Department of Health

Dear Robert,

Thank you for your letter of 12 October with an attached postcard from your constituent regarding digital hearing aids.

We recognise how important it is that the NHS should provide a full range of services for children and adults who may have problems with their hearing. These services include hearing tests, the provision of modern hearing aids, and follow-up care.

When I spoke at the RNID conference on 19 October, I made it clear that the Department of Health is working in partnership with the Royal National Institute for Deaf People to test out the benefits of providing leading edge digital hearing aids on the NHS as part of a modernised service.

We have been trying out new ideas at 20 NHS Trusts across the country and in the 12 months between the scheme starting and the end of September, over 10,500 aids had been fitted and almost 13,000 people assessed on the NHS.

This is the first time that digital hearing aids have been provided for NHS patients on this scale, supported by the introduction of high tech equipment and a modern service that looks at their individual need. More people are benefiting every day and by next March as many as 18,000 people could have a digital aid.

The results are being evaluated by the Institute of Hearing Research (IHR) and the findings will help to inform planning to make these changes available more widely in the NHS. We have already earmarked funds to do this, subject to favourable evaluation, but we need to address other key issues around additional patient demand and NHS capacity to deliver change. We will shortly begin to test out ways to involve the private sector - to support NHS audiology departments and boost NHS capacity to deliver benefits as quickly as possible, to as many people as possible.

We appreciate that people want digital aids to be available everywhere, now. However, we must ensure that we make the right aids available and have the infrastructure in place to deliver not just the hearing aids themselves but the support structures that will ensure that people who get these hearing aids can get the maximum possible benefits from them.

JACQUI SMITH MP