The Oto Tinnitus Program Is Now Available at Fairfield County Audiology
For most people living with tinnitus, the hardest part is not the appointment. It is the weeks afterward, at home, when the room is quiet and there is no one to ask. We now offer Oto at our Westport practice, a structured daily program that gives you something to work through between visits, set up and reviewed here in the clinic.
What Is Oto and How Does It Work?
Oto is a smartphone app for adults with tinnitus. It is used as part of the care plan we build for you after a tinnitus evaluation, not as something you find and start on your own.
The daily sessions are built around therapeutic sound. Sound is used to make your tinnitus stand out less against a quiet background, and the guided exercises alongside it work on the attention and the distress that make tinnitus harder to live with day to day.
The program runs over eight weeks. Each day takes around ten minutes, and you can do it at home, in the car, or before bed. It is structured, so you always know what comes next, and you have access to a tinnitus coach in the app between sessions.
Oto is for adults aged 18 and over. You can read more about the Oto app on their website.
What Does the Research Show?
Oto's daily sessions use therapeutic sound, with CBT-based techniques alongside. That approach is recommended for tinnitus management by NICE, by the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, and by Cochrane.
Oto has been studied in a randomized controlled trial at Flinders University, published in 2025. Ninety-six adults were randomized either to use Oto or to a wait-list control group. At six months, the group using Oto showed a statistically significant improvement on the Tinnitus Functional Index, a validated measure of how much tinnitus is affecting daily life, with a 9-point reduction and an effect size of 0.62.
As with Lenire, Oto is not a cure for tinnitus. No such cure currently exists. What it offers is a structured way to work on how much tinnitus intrudes on your day.
Who Is a Candidate for Oto?
Oto is part of the tinnitus care plan for most of the adults we see. It is not reserved for the most severe cases, and it does not depend on you being a candidate for a device.
It tends to be most useful when tinnitus is affecting your sleep, your concentration, or your mood, because the daily sessions give you something structured to work through rather than waiting it out. It suits patients who are willing to commit to a short session most days for eight weeks.
Oto is not the right starting point if your tinnitus is new and sudden, is in one ear only, or pulses in time with your heartbeat. Those need investigating first, which is one of the reasons a proper evaluation matters.
As with every recommendation we make, we decide together after your evaluation, once we understand your hearing, your tinnitus, and how it is affecting you.
How Does Oto Fit With Lenire and the Rest of Your Care?
These are not alternatives, and you will not be asked to choose between them.
Most of our patients who use Lenire use Oto alongside it, because the two do different jobs. Lenire uses bimodal neuromodulation, delivered through headphones and a TongueTip together, in 30 minute sessions twice a day over 12 weeks. Oto runs in parallel, ten minutes a day over eight weeks, and it is the part of the plan that keeps you going between appointments.
Oto is also used on its own, for patients who are not candidates for Lenire on assessment, or who would rather not use a device. Where hearing loss is part of the picture, hearing aids often remain the single most useful step, and Oto sits alongside those too.
Schedule a Tinnitus Consultation in Westport, CT
If tinnitus is affecting your sleep, your concentration, or your mood, a tinnitus evaluation is the place to start. Call our Westport practice at (203) 628-2142 to request a consultation. We will go through what we find with you and agree a plan together, and if Oto is part of it we will set you up before you leave.
