Professor Peter Blamey and Dr Elaine Saunders

 Elaine Saunders is an award-winning businesswoman, audiologist and academic. Her accolades include the Bio-Melbourne Network’s inaugural Women in Leadership Award (2015), Asia’s Leading Woman in Healthcare (2011), the Victorian Pearcy Entrepreneur Award (2011), and the American Academy of Audiology’s Award for Achievement in Industry (2010). Elaine was awarded the 2012 Melbourne Award for Contribution to Community by an Individual, named one of Australia’s 100 most influential women (2015), and received the prestigious Clunies Ross Entrepreneur of the Year award (2016). She is currently Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Health, Arts & Design department at Swinburne University of Technology, and Chair of their Innovation Centre.

Peter Blamey’s inventions are used in hearing aids, cochlear implants and headsets from major international manufacturers. In 2007, he was presented with the American Academy of Audiology’s International Award, and in 2012, Peter was awarded the prestigious Clunies Ross Science and Technology Medal for his research and development of hearing aids.

On Wednesday 24 March 2019 they spoke at our breakfast meeting about the importance of hearing in older age and how hearing aids can transform lives.

 On Friday 26 March 2019 Bristol breakfast Rotary Club held a fundraising event to provide an art and drama teacher for Elmfield School for the deaf. The event was well attended to hear about how the Australian team headed by Professor Graeme Clark developed the science in the field of cochlear im­plants and hear­ing. Both Professor Blamey and Dr Saunders played vital roles in this research. 

 "A blade of grass that sparked an innovation"

Threading a blade of grass into a seashell — and inspired by his deaf father — Australian Professor Graeme Clark unlocked the secret to positioning an implant inside a human cochlea. In 2013, Professor Clark won the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his vision in using medical intervention to restore the sense of hearing to thousands of people. Since implanting patient Rod Saunders with the world's first multi-channel cochlear implant in 1978, more than 450,000 people have undergone the procedure and experienced the moment they've been able to hear again — or for the first time.

 Graeme had commenced basic research on electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve fibres at the University of Sydney in 1967. Over the years this research has demonstrated that a multiple-channel cochlear implant can provide significant understanding of speech for severely-to-profoundly deaf children and adults and enable near normal speech for deaf children through electrical stimulation of the hearing nerves in the cochlea.

 A month after Graeme and his team operated on Rod Saunders to implant the University of Melbourne’s first bionic ear, they asked Dr Saunders to return so they could see whether the surgery had worked and how they could help him understand speech. When they tested him with an electric current, all Dr Saunders could hear was the hissing sound frequently experienced by deaf people. Finally, just before the third hearing test, they discovered a fault in the test equipment, which could account for the lack of results.

Dr Elaine Saun­ders and Pro­fes­sor Peter Blamey spoke about their work with Dr Graeme Clark and how they them­selves have made great strides in the field of hear­ing. It be­gan with an in­ter­est in is­sues of hear­ing loss. Peter initially a nuclear physicist be­came part of Graeme Clark’s research team and thus in­ter­ested in the is­sues of hear­ing loss and how best to help peo­ple with dif­fer­ent types of hear­ing dif­fi­culty at dif­fer­ent ages. Elaine Saunders was part of that team.

 In the year 2000, about 20 years af­ter Peter first started work­ing with Graeme Clark they de­cided to con­cen­trate on hear­ing aids and tech­nol­ogy for hear­ing aids. That’s when Elaine and Peter started the first busi­ness, Dy­namic Hear­ing which pro­gressed well, and then Blamey Saun­ders came along with it later.

The tech­nol­ogy that Graeme Clark in­vented back in the late 1970s for mul­ti­chan­nel cochlear im­plants had de­vel­oped into a very suc­cess­ful prod­uct for Cochlear, and that prod­uct in­cludes in­ven­tions that came from the Clark team and other re­search teams. Some of those same in­ven­tions are now used in the hear­ing aids. The rise of the im­plant did cause some tech­no­log­i­cal prob­lems.

One of the prob­lems in the late 1990s, was that there were a lot of peo­ple with a cochlear im­plant in one ear and a hear­ing aid in the other. This meant they tended to have a left ear au­di­ol­o­gist and a right ear au­di­ol­o­gist, be­cause the tech­nol­ogy was so dif­fer­ent in the two ears. It doesn’t take a PhD to un­der­stand that that’s not the best for the patient especially as you only have one brain to man­age that.

 Fol­low­ing a con­fer­ence in Lake Ar­row­head Cal­i­for­nia, Pro­fes­sor Blamey came back with an idea for a hear­ing aid that uses dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy to am­plify sound, keep­ing it au­di­ble and com­fort­able at the same time.

Dr Saun­ders had a dif­fer­ent role with Dr Clark. She was a biomed­i­cal en­gi­neer and an au­di­o­log­i­cal sci­en­tist in the UK and was look­ing to re-en­ter the work­force af­ter hav­ing four chil­dren. Clark was look­ing for an au­di­o­log­i­cal re­searcher and hired Dr Saun­ders to de­scribe the clin­i­cal prob­lems that needed engi­neers and sci­en­tists to solve. She used her skill, and de­vel­oped more skill around be­ing able to frame clin­i­cal prob­lems and clin­i­cal is­sues and ex­press them in a way that en­abled engi­neers and sci­en­tists to use their abil­i­ties to solve prob­lems.

 They continue to  be very in­no­va­tive with tech­nol­ogy, and that en­ables the big ad­vances they are mak­ing in tele-audiology and in clin­i­cal prac­tice by tak­ing the pain out of buy­ing a hear­ing aid and do­ing all the things that make it eas­ier for cus­tomers.

Sheffield "Shear" Perfection - Paul Spaven

Rotarian Paul Spaven, a surveyor extraordinaire provided a potted history of Sheffield Shear Perfection this morning. Paul has the privilege to survey many types of buildings both ancient and modern. Today he talked about La Plata the home of Burgon and Ball who started making sheep shears in 1730 and continue to do so to this day. 

Burgon & Ball is an old Sheffield firm which originally made shears, scissors and knives. Its Sheffield origins date back to 1730; they moved to the La Plata Works on Holme Lane in Malin Bridge in 1873. The works were built on the site of a cutlery grinding wheel, which had existed since the 1690s, on land cleared after the 1864 flood. The works stand on the banks of the River Loxley and the river provided much of the power for the works throughout the 1900s. In the latter part of the 19th century the company patented a design for hand sheep shears and in one year sold over 300,000 pairs of shears. By 1920 the firm was producing more garden shears than sheep shears and it has continued to diversify into garden tools over the years. There is still a market for hand sheep shears and the company is now the only British manufacturer making 75,000 a year.

Contact the Elderly

 This week we heard from Helen Ker- Bridges of “contact the Elderly” She told us that loneliness is the reality for many of the more than two million people aged 75 and over who live alone in the UK and as our population ages, the problem will only get worse. But it doesn’t have to be like that. At “Contact the Elderly” they run monthly social gatherings to bring older people together with their peers in the form of an afternoon tea party.

 Volunteers can make a real difference to the lives of older people who are isolated from family and friends by sparing a few hours to help. The charity is looking for volunteer drivers, hosts and coordinators to help provide monthly Sunday afternoon events for elderly who live alone.

 This can benefit older people in their community feel connected and valued. The charity does this through social groups that bring real pleasure to people through conversation, laughter and, crucially, something to look forward to by hosting an afternoon tea.

 There are 18 active groups in Bristol, each group consists of 20 volunteers who help organise the monthly gatherings, as well as collecting and accompanying older guests from their home to a host’s home for a Sunday afternoon of tea, cake and conversation. Volunteer hosts welcome a small group of guests into their home once or twice a year.

 Can you help if so contact Helen at helen.ker@contact-the-elderly.org.uk.