This week on 4-Quarter Lives, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox talks with Amanda Philpott, the co-founder and CEO of eargym. They discuss hearing health and how hearing loss is strongly correlated with cognitive decline and risk of dementia, yet is often overlooked in preventative healthcare. Amanda explains how early intervention can significantly improve quality of life as we age, and in particular reduce the social isolation (and consequent cognitive decline) that hearing loss can cause. She describes her own experience of living with moderate hearing loss and how this led her to create eargym after a 30-year career in the UK’s National Health Service. Eargym’s focus is on ongoing hearing checks and auditory training games focused on sound detection, localisation, discrimination and meaning attribution. Amanda also talks about the exciting but rewarding challenge in her Q3 of transitioning from the NHS to a role as start-up entrepreneur.

Amanda Philpott founded eargym in 2020. Both she and her eargym co-founder, ex-DJ Andy Shanks, live with moderate hearing loss and have family with dementia. She is an ex-NHS CEO, has extensive senior leadership and operational experience in health and care and is a population health strategy specialist. Her hope, in making the leap from her long public service career into the world of digital health start-ups, is to try to have a valuable impact on global health and well-being from a wholly different perspective. 

Some Useful Links:

* eargym website

* eargym video

* eargym online ear check

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Amanda Philpott: Are Your Ears Longevity-Ready?