Two winners from last year’s BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition have set up a company to commercialise the ideas behind their project, and have already scooped a business award.
Eimear O’Carroll and Rhona Togher now run Restored Hearing Ltd with Anthony Carolan, their former physics teacher at Ursuline College in Sligo.
RestoredHearing.ie's website
For the Young Scientist competition the team devised a simple therapy which eases temporary tinnitus for anyone with internet access and a set of outer ear headphones.
Tinnitus is a ringing in the ears, and temporary tinnitus can be caused by factors such as loud music at a concert or disco, overuse of an MP3 player, or workplace noise.
“It’s usually a ringing or a shrill high-pitched sound, caused by a bending of the tiny hairs which carry sound receptors in the inner ear,” Eimear explains.
Customers logging onto their website at RestoredHearing.ie can choose from a range of low frequency tones which are played back.
They say that the soothing tones helped to stop the high-pitched ringing for more than 95% of people tested with the technology.
“We’re looking at the possibility of a more mobile device, or maybe developing a mobile phone application,” Eimear says.
Business award
Last month their company won the “Emerging Technology Award” at the Connacht provincial final of the Ulster Bank Business Achievers Awards, and they will go on to the national finals later this year.
Rhona, Eimear and school collegue Niamh Chapman took the group runners up award at the 2009 BT Young Scientist show. They received €1,200 and a BT Perpetual trophy for their project, entitled “The Sound of Silence – An Investigation into Low Frequency Therapy for Tinnitus Sufferers”.
Rhona has gone on to university in Dublin, while Eimear is now studying physics at the University of Edinburgh. With the three company founders running their online business from three different places, they say they still manage to meet often enough to discuss ongoing developments.
