Introduction

The BTA, in partnership with the NIHR National Biomedical Research Unit in Hearing (NBRUH), is leading on a project to identify what the important research questions are.

The aim of the project is to identify the unanswered questions about tinnitus treatment from patient and clinical perspectives and then to prioritise those that patients and clinicians agree are the most important, which will help direct future research.

The project will be independently overseen by the James Lind Alliance, a non-profit making initiative. They specialise in bringing patients and clinicians together to identify and prioritise uncertainties, or 'unanswered questions', about the effects of treatments that they agree are most important. The James Lind Alliance is internationally recognised as an authoritative and independent organisation to guide this work and produce an unbiased result, which gives equal weighting to the views of patients and clinicians.

Why are we doing this?

Although we all want to find a cure for tinnitus, it is important to better understand the impact of current treatments for tinnitus, and how effective they are. The outcome of the Tinnitus Priority Setting Partnership project will be a set of research questions, prioritised by clinicians and patients that can then be used to encourage researchers to investigate what is important to both groups. Research funders – including the BTA - can then use the list to identify research applications which will answer questions that patients and clinicians have agreed are a priority.

The project will also help to increase awareness of why research into tinnitus is necessary and important. It will be used to campaign for other major funders to invest in tinnitus research, as there will have been an independent process to identify that the research is necessary and relevant.

We would like you to get involved

We are looking for as many people as possible from the tinnitus community to get involved in the Tinnitus Priority Setting Partnership. There will be questionnaires in the next two issues of Quiet. In the Winter edition there will be one asking you to submit questions that are important to you. We will collate these and in Spring 2012’s edition there will be a questionnaire asking you to vote to prioritise the questions. We will then publish the results next September. These will also be available on our website.

This is a real opportunity to get involved and influence future research on tinnitus, and we hope you will be able to get involved.

The project is being funded by the Judi Meadows Memorial Fund, and in-kind donations of staff time are being contributed by the BTA and NBRUH

For more information:

Visit the James Lind Alliance website by clicking here.

If you would like to view the top 10 research priorities, shared by patients, carers and clinicians, for each completed JLA Priority Setting Partnership, please click here.

To go to the JLA Tinnitus Priority Setting Partnership survey, please click here.