German health insurance pays for app against tinnitus
The German Techniker Krankenkasse is covering the costs of a smartphone app, a new treatment method for tinnitus, on a trial basis.
An ENT doctor or a hearing aid acoustician appointed by him determines the individual tinnitus frequency of a patient. This indicates which areas of the auditory center of the brain are affected by the tinnitus. With the Tinnitracks app, the frequency can be filtered out of the patient's favorite music. According to the health insurance company, regular listening to the filtered music calms the overactive tinnitus nerve cells. This can reduce the intensity of the tinnitus.
The treatment method is useful if there is subjective, chronic stable-tonal tinnitus without fluctuation in pitch that lasts longer than three months in total. The phantom sound must be narrow-band enough so that a tinnitus frequency can be determined. The frequency must be below 8500 Hz.
Founded in 2012, Sonormed GmbH has developed Tinnitracks, an award-winning medical product for tinnitus treatment that, according to its own advertising, gives over three million tinnitus sufferers in Germany access to a new form of therapy. In June 2014, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology named Sonormed the most innovative company in the healthcare sector in the EU.
