Clinical research is everyone’s future
We are committed to a research-positive culture in USAIS; we want to give our patients wider access to clinical research – to improve patient care and treatment options. Evidence shows that clinically research-active hospitals have better patient care outcomes. We want every one of our patients to have the opportunity to take part in a national research project.
Our research themes and principles are:
Our Themes: What will we focus on?
🔹 Hearing with two ears and beyond the audiogram
Exploring the benefits of binaural hearing, and understanding hearing outcomes beyond traditional measures.
🔹 Biological factors influencing cochlear implant performance
Investigating the biological mechanisms that affect outcomes and how they may help us personalise care.
🔹 Person-centred and remote care
Developing innovative approaches to make care more accessible, efficient and tailored to individual needs.
🔹 Hearing across the lifespan
Understanding hearing health and cochlear implantation from early childhood through to older adulthood.
3. Our Principles: How will we work?
Whatever research we undertake, we agreed that it should be underpinned by four key principles:
We are lucky that we work within the University; this means we can often translate research findings quickly into benefit for deaf people. If you’re one of our patients or a family member, YOU are part of our research team! 
Our staff contribute directly to research projects at all stages: planning, leading, collecting data, writing up results, and sharing findings in journals, newsletters and conferences. We also supervise BSc, MSc and PhD projects, and some staff are doing PhDs themselves. We believe that patients and their families should be involved in research at all stages too. All patients will receive research invitations unless they tell us they don’t want to – of course there is no obligation to take part – that is always patient choice and does not affect care with us in any way.
We also have an active researcher/patient/recipient/supporter group and partnership of people drawn from all walks of life, who are involved with, or have lived experience of hearing loss and/or cochlear implants. Everyone has something to contribute. Find out more about All_Ears@UoS.
We collaborate actively with a number of academic departments within the University, including the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, Clinical Neuroscience Group in the Faculty of Medicine, Web and Internet Science, the Department of Music and the Faculty of Health Sciences.
Have a look at the research interests of some of our team:
Nicci Campbell
Helen Cullington
Mary Grasmeder
Kate Hough
Tracey Newman
Stuart Whyte
Some of the areas of USAIS research are below:
We are recruiting children with bilateral cochlear implants aged 8 to 16; email ais.bears@soton.ac.uk for more information.
Pioneering research which aims to enable more patient empowerment through remote monitored self-care. Please contact us if you may be interested in being seen remotely.
Hearing preservation and optimisation
Research into preservation of residual hearing after cochlear implantation; improved detection and prevention of adverse events including device failures and optimisation of tuning.
Meeting the needs of all cochlear implant recipients
USAIS is committed to developing new approaches to help particular groups of people with specific needs who receive cochlear implants.
Helping people hear better is not just about enabling listeners to pick up quieter sounds-it is also about maximising the ability of the brain to interpret sound.
Could a wearable haptic (feeling) device help deaf people?