Mobile Audiology Van – North Wales

Overview

AGS played a pivotal role in an award-winning project to deliver a mobile audiology van to a Trust in North Wales. The van won a recognition award for improving access to care in rural and geographically challenging areas of North Wales at the Advancing Healthcare Awards Cymru 2025! Our expert Design Team designed to be under the 3.5-tonne limit so that it could be driven on a standard UK driving license. This further increased the van’s value as this meant that no staff member needed to undertake a specialist driving license to operate it.

Client’s Review of the Project

 The following describes the story of the van from idea to delivery and beyond! Kindly written by Suzanne Tyson, Principal Audiologist at the Trust.

Initial Idea

“The audiology service at Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) is a pan-BCU scientific service providing audiology services covering a large geographical area. This means that some patients have to travel great distances to reach our clinics and this is made more difficult as public transport in some areas is non-existent. Despite providing outreach clinics, we still struggled to offer care closer to home for many of our patients and the continuing growing demand for our services requires us to be innovative with our solutions. 

So, the idea arose for our Audiology van, ‘Hear to Help’ which has enabled us to provide a more accessible service across the BCUHB. 

Audiology Van

Our custom-adapted Audiology van arrived at Glan Clwyd Hospital, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) in August 2024 and since then has been in full use by the BCU Audiology team. The purchase of the van was funded by charitable funds with the support of additional national charitable funds. 

The van is fully equipped with a sound treated area and essential audiology equipment enabling us to offer assessments and rehabilitation for hearing, tinnitus and auditory implant services. This means that individuals are seen in locations closer to home.

The Audiology van provides a cost effective, flexible option for service delivery and compliments BCU Audiology’s commitment to increase community Audiology provision. 

Public Feedback

During the first 12 months, we asked service users to complete a questionnaire.  The feedback we got was very positive including quotes like:

• “Very handy for travelling, no waiting, straight in. Hope you can keep the van going!”
• “Venue easy to find, Excellent parking. First class service!”
• “Very pleasant staff, great idea having local service saves vulnerable people having to travel a distance”

We have also used the van to raise awareness of our services, at various community events, some of which received over 200 contacts!

So the van has been a great success, and we will continue to utilise it to better serve our rural Audiology communities.”

Conclusion

As the ever-increasing need for more accessible audiology services continues, more innovative methods of providing care to those who are unable to access standard services such as these vans are imperative and AGS are here to support.

Whatever your audiology enquiry is, it’s worth speaking to our experts today to see how we can help.