Thank you to everyone who has signed this petition, we have supported the professionals and put forward a united front to NICE. 

Thanks to Cochlear UK, they gave me the opportunity to use their submission to NICE, to say how my life was before I had my Cochlear Implant 

NICE published the updated guidance on section 1.5 as follows

1.5 For the purposes of this guidance, severe to profound deafness is defined as hearing only sounds that are louder than 80 dB HL (pure-tone audiometric threshold equal to or greater than 80 dB HL) at 2 or more frequencies (500 Hz, 1,000 Hz, 2,000 Hz, 3,000 Hz and 4,000 Hz) bilaterally without acoustic hearing aids. Adequate benefit from acoustic hearing aids is defined for this guidance as:

for adults, a phoneme score of 50% or greater on the Arthur Boothroyd word test presented at 70 dBA
for children, speech, language and listening skills appropriate to age, developmental stage and cognitive ability. [2009, amended 2018]

More people will now have an opportunity to have a Cochlear Implant. How many is really an unknown, there are assumptions being made in the Resource impact report, so you may have seen a statement today saying 890 people for 2024/2025 this is referring to Table 1. The estimated additional people having CI for 2019/2020 is 180, then as years go by it's 520, 860, 1190, 1530 and finally 2024/2025 is 890. However there will be a review in 2022, so we will see how those figures develop more with any further changes. 

Obviously it will take a while for the new criteria to be put in place with regards to funding, so I can understand the estimates for the first year being 180. 

Therefore the CI centres will have a greater workload, however the technology is constantly developing. Please look at the link about Remote Care with Helen Cullington, this will hopefully be the future for those who want this option and cut back on time in clinics.

A couple of dates for your diary, the NCIUA - National Cochlear Implant Users Association has a summer meeting on the 8th June in London. This is a useful meeting to get the latest on research and see presentations from all CI manufacturers with updates on what's happening / coming soon.

NADP - National Association of Deafened People has their conference on 22nd June. Please check out their websites, the details should be on shortly with a programme / agenda.

Finally, special thanks to Brian Lamb, Debi Vickers, Pádraig Kitterick, Emma Stapleton, Manchester CI team, BCIG, Jim Fitzpatrick MP, Richard Mitchell and Cochlear UK.

VICTORY !!!