Hearing Diagnostics is an Edinburgh-based healthtech startup developing a spatially-localised hearing test that monitors patient head movements to identify which sounds patients actually hear. The company’s approach is designed to make reliable hearing testing accessible outside specialist clinics by tracking spatial hearing and patient behavior rather than relying solely on traditional tests. It recently raised £1.1 million in a funding round led by Archangels with participation from Scottish Enterprise's Scottish Co-Investment Fund to support commercial expansion. Hearing Diagnostics plans to expand its commercial efforts in both the UK and the US. The startup cites large unmet need—drawing on WHO projections that nearly 2.5 billion people will have some degree of hearing loss by 2050 and that unaddressed hearing loss costs the global economy about $980 billion annually—to frame the market opportunity. Co-founder Dr. Claudia Freigang said the mission is to drive early diagnosis of hearing loss and ensure positive patient outcomes by enabling testing outside specialist settings. Hearing Diagnostics has built a rapid hearing test that uses headphones fitted with a motion sensor and asks patients to turn their heads in response to multi-directional sounds. Computational algorithms assess those head-turn responses; in pilot trials the system was more accurate than existing tests and more resilient to imagined sounds and background noise. The test can be administered without a soundproof booth and by a shop assistant rather than a highly paid audiologist, increasing accessibility and lowering cost. It takes about three minutes versus the 25–30 minutes required for conventional hearing tests. The Edinburgh-based company received £715,000 from Archangels to fund UK trials with universities and hearing-aid retailers ahead of a planned full market launch in 2021. The company is targeting a large addressable market: WHO estimates 466 million people worldwide experience hearing loss, two-thirds of adults over 70 are affected, 86% of hearing loss in the UK goes unmanaged, and the global hearing-aid market was estimated at £14 billion in 2018, growing ~5% annually.

Total raised

$2M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Nov 2022