OTO App for Managing Tinnitus — Post Your Experiences and Reviews

I've seen a number of references to the OTO app here, and they seemed mostly positive, so I thought I'd give it a try.

A few relevant factors:

• I've been through a lot of therapy in my life, and have found very little satisfactory.
• I'm somewhat familiar with the principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and am dubious.
• I'm stubborn.
• I have an incredibly hard time relaxing.
• I'm also near desperate.

So... the first 15 minute "session" amounted to little more than an advertisement for the app itself, presented as a story from an "actual patient." This does not supply any confidence in the app, as anything but a scam. I now fear that all the introductory sessions will be along this line, leading me further down the garden path, until the free trial period ends, and they take my money.

Yes, I have a deeply suspicious nature. It's well earned.

I will report any new impressions or results as they arise.

But I ask in general: what are other folks' experiences with this thing? Is it legit? Does it improve? Does it _help_?

I really can't afford formal habituation therapy, nor is there a therapist who offers the service anywhere close to me, and I am a COVID-19 recluse, having remained - and choosing to remain - almost entirely isolated for over two and a half years now. So this is all I've got.

 

None of the tinnitus apps help you lower your tinnitus loudness. Who knows if they help with habituation either because habituation could have happened without using any app at all and you would never know.

OTO is backed by a lot of money though and they certainly want to be the #1 app to line their founders and investors' pockets. Do you think Y Combinator would have invested in this if they had not seen the upside of being involved in this incurable condition? It's legit insofar as not being run by scammers but you could doubt their intentions.

UK tinnitus health startup scoops £510,000 and joins Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator

I tried it but I didn't like they way they were grooming me to be a paid customer. I almost fell for it but then said no way.

I much prefer free options like TinnitusPlay and myNoise for my masking needs but they don't have CBT or mindfulness if you absolutely need that.

How long have you had tinnitus? It says "Unknown" on your profile?

 

Thanks for your feedback. Unfortunately it reinforces my suspicions. I'll stick with it just a little bit, and see where it goes.

I understand that any such therapy or app cannot actually reduce the tinnitus itself. While trying to stay abreast of possible advances in that area (they seem to be few, and inconsistent), I am just making an attempt here to "manage" it better.

I've made use of the web version of myNoise for a long time now, even before I sought it for tinnitus mitigation. Thanks for the recommendation of TinnitusPlay.

I wrote "unknown" because I really don't know. As I said in my introduction, I think I had a kind of tinnitus precursor decades ago, but it's been within the past few years that I've become so disturbed by it. I can't narrow it down any further than that, because I have a notoriously weird sense of time (a condition related, I believe, to my ASD).

 

I just recently started the OTO trial period. And being a major skeptic myself, it will take some time I'm sure to buy in. I'm trying to remain open minded because this is the first actual therapy I have made an attempt at.

Having had tinnitus for nearly two years now, I have almost entirely depended upon masking as my primary source of help. But this also led to me putting headphones back on and is possibly what led to my recent spike and first major setback.

So far my impressions of the OTO app are positive. Although the sessions seem short, they do seem to be helpful. Time of course will tell. It's really easy to be dismissive or pessimistic of treatment because we are repeatedly let down by the medical establishment.

What I do know is this, if I'm willing to dump thousands into ENTs, GPs, Audiology and prescription/natural medicine, $9.99 a month with open cancellation is not a problem. So I'm willing to give OTO a try.

We don't know until we try, right? Best of luck to you.

 

I deleted the app before the free trial expired. As I figured, it didn't really seem to go anywhere too quickly, and I just didn't have the patience and discipline to stick with it.

 

How did it work out for you?

OTO have now raised a further $3.3 million. This makes the total they have raised nearly $4 million.

 

I'm still playing it out. All of the sessions seem short. And some are absolutely useless (to me at least).

The mindfulness is what I'm mostly working on. Habituation has always been my goal. I thought i was close 3 months ago until I had a sizeable spike. Until OTO I hadn't really messed around with mindfulness and meditation (quite difficult to achieve).

I actually have been to busy this week to continue my sessions so thanks for reminding me... back to it

 

I found the first "lesson" or whatever you call it very uninforming, more like "just relax". Also the sounds were limited and I get way more variety with a free app.

I thought OTO was connected to Treble Health, or endorsed by. They seem well informed so maybe I should give it another try.

I'm now wondering if they came up with the name "OTO" to capitalize on Otonomy and OTO-313. Seems like a strange coincidence.

 

"Oto" just means ear in ancient greek (single "ous" - plural "ota"), which the medical science uses in its terminology as with many (if not all) medical words.

Everything ear related can be called Oto or something, so the name is not unusual at all.

 

O, yes now I see that's why they call the people that know nothing about tinnitus otolaryngology!

I'm going to give the app another go.

 

Hi guys.

George here - I'm a founder of Oto. My role is to lead the product development as well as writing the code for the app. Just thought I'd drop by in case you had any questions for me directly.

Brief backstory - I was a doc in the military, I have tinnitus, I started Oto to improve accessibility to tinnitus CBT.

r.e. the name - it's actually a bit of a legacy thing from when we first started. We used to write algorithms for predicting hearing loss and other techy stuff in audiology. Oto was short and sweet and vaguely relevant so we went with it. Currently considering a name change though - grateful for your thoughts on our shortlist!

I like the tinnitus funding/research/CBT debate. My personal thoughts:

• The pie isn't a fixed size, and if we didn't raise this money for Oto it wouldn't automatically be redistributed in search of a cure. It's more likely our investors would end up funding a digital therapeutic of a similar style for a different chronic condition. We haven't been awarded any money from research funds.
• The evidence base for psychological therapy is strong and it is already recommended by NICE and the equivalent European guidelines. I agree that it is unnecessary to pump more research money into validating CBT for tinnitus.
• That being said, we may need to run an RCT of our own to validate Oto itself as a provider of CBT therapy. This is so we can try to get prescribed on the NHS and other healthcare providers in a similar way to Sleepio for insomnia. I'd rather we didn't have to spend money on this but it'll largely be focused around making a business case for digital CBT vs in-person therapy as opposed to validating CBT itself (again).

Look forward too hearing your thoughts, ideas and any criticisms you may have

George

 

You just said it right here. Repeat 10 times and chuck your app in the bin. Face to face human interaction can't be beat and an app adds nothing.

Really in disbelief right now.

And you are a company that discriminates. Apps discriminate.

People with tinnitus of a sound reactive nature, hyperacusis, degrees of hearing loss...

This is hideous and regressive in 2022.

NO APPS.

 

Hi Nick. Sorry for the extremely tardy response.

An app can beat face to face interaction on cost and accessibility. It means we can give people help and support for £10 a month from the comfort of their own home, and I think that counts for something.

Some people do habituate faster with a face to face therapist. There is only so much an app can do. We started to offer direct access to therapists at the end of last year to address this.

We try to provide support and information on things like hyperacusis and hearing loss too. As I said before, it's sometimes difficult to decide how specific we can go before we start to fill the app with content that doesn't apply to the majority.

 

→ Oto awarded £500k from Innovate UK to advance tinnitus teletherapy

Well...

 

Yet the grant for actual research into a tinnitus cure was awarded £50k. FFS.

Enough with the CBT bullshit already.

 

It's a mess! Different funding stream but still a mess. The "agenda" is telehealth, sped up by the pandemic. It's cheaper or more cost efficient. Why have CBT staff when you can have an app?

And what sounds do people with noise sensitivity and hyperacusis find harshest? You guessed it, artificial sound through laptops and phones.

These people are dimwits and arseholes. They will often come out with bullshit like "the developer has tinnitus"... add your own bullshit here!

 

Is there nobody here who have tried OTO for a longer period of time?

 

I use "ReSound Tinnitus Relief" app. It's free and works well for me. You can customise sounds.

 

I find the OTO app relaxes me and keeps me positive which is a good thing.

 

Currently, OTO is the only app with a cicada sound that blends or even partially masks my new even higher frequency tinnitus. I didn’t think it could get any higher, yet it certainly did.

I have used plenty of the free apps that also have cicada noises but they just don’t have the right frequency. They used to work before my tinnitus worsened.

I’ve listened to some of the tutorials. I do agree that they are short and I also agree that if you have any experience with cognitive behavioral therapy, it’s probably a lot of information you already know.