DBAH Case Study | Earswitch Ltd

The Earswitch was developed by a UK GP (Primary care doctor) to help people with severe communication problems to activate virtual keyboards to allow them them to communicate.

The support Earswitch received through the Digital Innovation Business Acceleration Hub was pivotal for the business and product development.

The video case study includes interviews with Founder, Dr Nick Gompertz, as well as the researchers from the University of Bath who were enthusiastic and engaged with the project from the offset.

Watch the short video for the full product development story and scroll down for further detail about the support and funding process Earswitch underwent through the programme…

Interview with Earswitch Founder, Dr Nick Gompertz

Describe your business, a little bit about yourself and the reasons behind starting your business.

I am a doctor in Somerset with over 20 years experience as a GP, and prior training in hospital medicine, and have worked in Oncology and a Hospice. I have seen people with Motor Neurone Disease losing the ability to use their communication devices as their disease progresses, and have personally witnessed a friend needing computers to help communicate. 

I always knew that I could control a muscle in my ear & wondered if there was a way that this could help people communicate. However it wasn’t until 2018 that this changed, after watching a documentary about a 13 year old boy who was non-verbal but had written a book with eye-gaze on a physical spelling board. It was then that I discovered that there were digital otoscopes on Amazon that allowed me to show that the ear-drum moved with intentional contraction of the middle ear muscle. Within 6 months I had managed to use software that’s freely available online to translate the intentional ear-drum movements to control virtual on-screen keyboards and assistive technology software. These applications are used by people with severe neurological conditions to communicate, in a similar way to the late Professor Stephen Hawking.

I’ve approached multiple tech companies including the big five hearing-aid companies to help develop The Earswitch to both help people communicate, but also as a handsfree control for hearing aids and smart earphones. 

I have had a lot of positive support, including mentoring, but it wasn’t until a mentor Mike Sotirakos introduced me to the University of Bath Digital Innovation Business Acceleration Hub (DBAH) that things finally took off. 

Who is in your team?

I set up Earswitch Ltd, simply to validate the idea, to try and get investment initially but now realise that the commercial route is how to progress. Currently my chief collaborators are the academics at University of Bath who are helping validate The Earswitch, and the Motor Neurone Disease Association who are also supporting this. Also the Open Ambient Assistive Living Lab (Herriot Watt University, Edinburgh) who is supporting The Earswitch as a pivotal technology in their Assisted Living Hackathon.

The next stage is to build a team with all necessary skill sets, experience and expertise to progress to roll out a commercially viable product, and to license the non-assistive tech applications to incumbents in the tech markets.

What business successes have you had so far?

DBAH and the subsequent involvement of SETsquared Scale-up programme has been pivotal in moving The Earswitch forward; with successful planning and engagement from Dr Rich Stevenson (DBAH), and Dr Dario Cazzola (Associate Professor; Dept Health), and Dr Ben Metcalfe (Associate Professor; Dept of Electronics Engineering) from the University of Bath. All three were enthusiastic and engaged in early pilot survey, and in planning and applying for a NHS NIHR i4i Connect grant, with bid writing funded by SETsquared.

HE EARSWITCH TEAM: GP DR NICK GOMPERTZ (CENTRE) WITH THE RESEARCH TEAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BATH (LEFT - RIGHT) MARTIN LEONHARDT AND BEN METCALFE (ELECTRONIC & ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING), RICHARD STEVENSON AND DARIO CAZZOLA (HEALTH).

Have you received any awards / accreditations / nominations?

Received NHS National Institute Health Research (NIHR) i4i Connect Grant; predominately funding validation work with the University of Bath.

Are you looking for investment / received any grant funding?

As above; NIHR i4i £150,000

A small Angel Investor contribution to secure International patent applications.

Looking for further investment to support a portfolio of patent applications extending the in-ear and non-ear related spin out tech, and to progress further grant funding.

How did you find out about the Digital Innovation Business Acceleration Hub?

Contact via a business mentor who recommended and put me in contact with Garry Pratt, Entrepreneur in Residence at SETsquared Bath and DBAH.

How has the Digital Innovation Business Acceleration Hub helped you?

DBAH facilitated contacts with enthusiastic and interested academics at the University of Bath, who’s fields overlapped with The Earswitch. This allowed early discussions and support, and pilot surveys, prior to formal grant funding, and also provided support & input with formulating the NIHR i4i Grant application.

DBAH facilitated engagement with the SETsquared Scale-up Programme, that funded a bid writer for each of the 2 stages of the i4i application.

What’s been your biggest challenge to date?

Translating interest into confidence and commitment of organisations to a novel concept;

Many tech industry players showed interest, but as with some of the academic organisations tasked with developing assistive tech, felt the tech was too early stage, and needed more validation before committing to help. COVID19 clearly delayed this further.

The frustration is that I have been able to communicate with The Earswitch for over 2 years; but that no one with communication issues has had the chance to gain from this.

What are your next steps?

To complete the work with the University of Bath to validate how many people can use The Earswitch for those with communication needs, and also for the general population to control their tech handsfree/ invisibly and silently from earphones.

To apply for the next stage NHS funding (i4i Product Development Award) to ultimately manufacture dedicated Earswitches for assistive use.

To continue to engage user groups, and to progress the assistive integration of The Earswitch with current tech; particularly as a pivotal tech device being featured in the Open Ambient Assistive Living Lab hackathon/ mashup event in May (Herriot-Watt University, Edinburgh).

Also, to promote The Earswitch for consumer and industrial uses via hearing aid / earphone and other tech companies.

I believe that licensing The Earswitch to  consumer tech companies, so that off-the-shelf earphones & hearing-aids have inbuilt assistive functionality will mean that people with neuro-disabilities no longer having to pay high costs for low tech interfaces. People who use smart earphones & hearing-aids in daily life, will so gain from handsfree, invisible and silent control (eg skipping a music track whilst gardening, switching on a head-cam whilst skiing or mountain biking, answering a call whilst carrying the shopping etc)

To look at other areas of development: AR/VR and Gaming controller, Military communications etc. Work to progress other spin-out applications which enable The Earswitch sensors to provide integrate functionality within earphones far beyond the original concept.

Work also to progress other non-ear related concepts that have developed within this process.  

What’s the ethos underpinning your business?

The whole reason for developing The Earswitch is to help at least one person communicate. The central ethos of Earswitch Ltd therefore is to achieve access for those people who are the most disadvantaged in society.

However, through this journey the widespread applications have become clear; so Earswitch Ltd’s secondary ethos is to develop tech IP that is pivotal to platform technology; designing tech which will be as ubiquitous as the next “mouse-click”.

What’s the best piece of business advice you’ve been given?

One of my business advisors, Mike Sotirakos, offered me his advice but told me that I should not necessarily follow it as every business is different; I have listened very carefully to everything everyone has been so charitable to talk with me about. I have understood and learned, and adapted my approach, and the business model, in light of all this advice, having taken into account that it needs to be appropriate to Earswitch Ltd’s own circumstances.

For further information and to follow the development of Earswitch Ltd visit the website.

The Digital Innovation Business Acceleration Hub is a 3 year programme funded though the European Regional Development Fund, partnered with SETsquared and the University of Bath.

SETsquared Bath is part of a global business incubator and Accelerator that helps startups and innovative business in the UK.