Did you know that even if you’ve had your cochlear implant for many years, with knowledge, tools and activities, it’s possible to improve your listening and communication experiences? Christine talks us through her experience with a new app based tool called CoPilot. Read more about how CoPilot helps with hearing therapy.
“I’ve had my implant for 15 years and I’ve pretty much plateaued with my ability – mainly because I don’t really work on it,” says Christine, who uses a Cochlear™ Nucleus® 7 Sound Processor.
How CoPilot can help a crazy lifestyle
“I’m a mom of three children aged 13, 10, and 6, and own a small but growing IT consulting company with two partners,” she says. “Since my life is pretty crazy (I say I live in a zoo pretty much), I usually only have 10-15 minutes here and there.”
With so many demands on her time, working on her communication skills hasn’t been a priority for Christine – until now. Since using Cochlear CoPilot, a new self-guided app, Christine is able to incorporate activities into her daily routine to improve her listening skills.
What is CoPilot
Cochlear CoPilot provides interactive activities to help build listening and communications skills to use whenever and wherever suits you.
“I always have my phone with me and to do a quick exercise a couple times a day. It’s fun and interesting and really makes me focus on listening skills,” says Christine.
“With CoPilot, I love the little listening exercises that help me work on word recognition. I like how they are short. I can do them anytime – waiting for a cup of coffee at the shop or waiting to pick up a kid from soccer practice – so it makes it easy to do that instead of reading the news. It’s like playing a short game,” says Christine.
Research shows that access to visually engaging, plain language information that focuses on concrete behaviors and skills supports your ability to act on information to improve outcomes.1,2
CoPilot has more structure than other resources
This resonates with Christine who says she has found many of the existing resources available don’t offer enough direction or structure.
“Many of the other methods are great but are very open ended. They usually say things like ‘read an audiobook’, ‘listen to music’, ‘practice identifying sounds’ – things that are great, but very vague and hard to really just get started.”
“I really like how CoPilot gives structure on what to do to help improve my hearing. ‘Go listen to music’ sounds easy enough but it’s not as easy and fun to do so in a learning way. Having a guided app takes away the guesswork and also helps by giving you feedback.”
The convenience of an app
Christine says that with her cochlear implant alone, she can understand basic conversation in a quiet calm environment, but still struggles in noisy places like a restaurant and with music.
She says the app has helped her to understand which sounds she was recognizing easily and where she needed to work: “That is something that is hard for untrained people to do in an everyday environment.”
And as a recipient, it’s hard to know what specifically to work on “which is why CoPilot is so cool”.
The convenience of an app on her phone also makes all the difference: “Seeing a listening therapist is out of reach for so many people due to money, availability and time, having an app to do skill building is so nice!”
CoPilot helps with hearing therapy, so get started today! Download Cochlear CoPilot for free from the Apple® App Store®*.
