JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Introduction Cochlear implants provide hearing to more than 600,000 people with deafness worldwide; patients require lifelong follow-up. Care for adults with implants in the UK occurs at one of 19 centres, which may be far from the patient’s home. In a previous RCT, we successfully introduced person-centred care. We designed, implemented and evaluated a remote care pathway: a personalised online support tool, home hearing check, self device adjustment, and upgrading of sound processors at home rather than in clinic. The remote care group had a significant increase in empowerment after using the tools; patients and clinicians were keen to continue. We would now like to scale up these improvements as an option to the more than 12,000 UK adults using implants; we are commissioning an independent evaluation of this intervention and roll out to establish if it achieves its aims of more empowered and confident patients; more accessible and equitable care; stable hearing; more efficient, person-centred and scalable service; more satisfied and engaged patients and clinicians. Methods and analysis This project will scale up and evaluate a person-centred long-term follow-up pathway for adults using cochlear implants using a personalised website including a home hearing check, upload of photos of cochlear implant site, listening in noise and music practice, spares ordering, questionnaires, and other resources. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses will occur. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval was received in November 2018 from the South Central - Hampshire A Research Ethics Committee (REC reference 18/SC/0658, IRAS project ID 242575) and HRA and Health and Care Research Wales (HCRW). Results will be disseminated in the clinical and scientific communities and also to the patient population via peer-reviewed research publications both online and in print, conference and meeting presentations, posters, newsletter articles, website reports, and social media.