Future Ear Radio: Recent Episodes
Dave Kemp
Frequent updates on the developing worlds of hearing tech, hearing health, consumer audio and voice technology.
Guests of the show include experts with backgrounds in audiology, consumer technology, audio, voice tech, biometric monitoring, and more.
The goal of Future Ear Radio is to connect the trends converging around our ears. (FuturEar)
Guests: Annie Duchen, Au.D - Head of OTC Hearing Aid Sales & Customer Service at Sony. Amanda Fadden, Au.D. - OTC Product & Commercial Lead at Sony.
Dave is joined by Annie and Amanda to discuss the current state of the OTC hearing aid market, including the Sony offering and how clinicians are implementing these devices into their portfolio.
On this special episode of the podcast, Dave moderates a panel discussion from the Future of Hearing Healthcare Conference 2025 discussing a variety of bills that are being proposed or have recently passed to increase the scope of Audiology within each panelists' state.
The panel members are:
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Dr. Alicia Spoor (Maryland)
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Dr. Kelley Linton (Arkansas)
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Dr. Bryan Greenaway (Oregon)
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Stephanie Czuhajewski - Executive Director of the Academy of Doctors of Audiology (ADA)
Guests: Robert Sweetow, Ph.D. - Co-Inventor/Scientific Advisor and Miles Aron, Ph.D. - Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder
Dave is joined on the podcast this week by Robert & Aaron to discuss their company, Neurotone AI, and their flagship Auditory Training platform, LACE AI Pro.
Guests: Brent Jones, CEO & Robert Allen Au.D, Clinical Director of Topple Diagnostics
Dave kicks off the 2025 podcasting season by bringing on Brent and Robert to discuss their business, Topple Diagnostics. The conversation encompasses how the business was conceived and built, significant milestones as the business scaled, how they've found product-market-fit, and how they're trying to make vestibular diagnostics more accessible for patients and more affordable for clinics to provide.
Guest: Oli Luke - Co-Founder & Chief Marketing Officer for Orange & Gray
Oli joins Dave on the podcast this week to share his perspective on how to navigate and capitalize on the rapidly changing marketing environment within the hearing healthcare market.
Guests: Ross O'Neill Ph.D (Founding CEO) & Hubert Lim Ph.D (Chief Scientific Officer) of Neuromod
Dave is joined by Ross & Hubert to discuss:
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The backstory of how Ross & Hubert met and ultimately partnered together on Lenire
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Hubert's research and papers he wrote about paired stimulation & Pavlovian conditioning, which included data that identified tongue stimulation combined with sound as a promising direction to pursue
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An overview of what exactly tinnitus is and why Lenire presents such a novel approach to treating tinnitus
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Other types of synchronous-stimuli approaches that have emerged in other healthcare verticals (i.e. mirror therapy for phantom limb pain)
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The challenging process of gaining FDA approval and the clinical trials that were conducted throughout the process
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Being featured as the cover story on Nature Communications
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The initial roll-out of Lenire, the current state of the provider network, and the real-world data that's being collected and published
Guest: Patrick Lawler - Director of Sales at Cognivue
Patrick joins Dave on the podcast this week to share a personal testimonial about the need for better cognitive screenings in healthcare.
Guests: Jen La Borde BC-HIS & Chelsea Walters BC-HIS - Owners of Family Hearing
Jen and Chelsea sit down with Dave this week on the podcast to discuss:
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Their professional journeys, how they both ended up at Family Hearing, and then eventually partnering together to own and operate the clinic
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The process of evaluating the prospect of purchasing and owning a clinic
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Partnership - determining who does what, leveraging each other's strengths, and how to maintain a strong partnership when things go sideways with the business
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Transitioning from the original owners to Chelsea and Jen and choosing which aspects of the clinic to preserve and which to overhaul
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Staffing, cultivating talent and creating paths of upward mobility for employees
Guest: Kelsi Mangrem, Au.D. - Owner of Holland Hearing Center
Kelsi joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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Her backstory, route into Audiology, and how she ultimately decided to purchase a private practice to own & operate
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Reminiscing on the first year of owning Holland Hearing Center - failing, learning and growing
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Methods for growing her network of fellow entrepreneurs and business owners and the benefits of cultivating that type of professional network
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The realities of owning and operating a private practice in 2024 - threats and opportunities
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Making the decision to remove third party administrator (TPA) plans from her offering
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How to differentiate a private practice in 2024
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Leaning into effective, modern digital marketing strategies
Guest: Reuben Zielinski - Co-Founder and Owner of Redux
Reuben joins Dave on the podcast this week for an in-person episode to discuss Reuben's professional journey that ultimately led him to designing and developing the Redux Drying System.
Guest: Chelsea Treseder, MBA - Cofounder of MyVitalsPro (MVP); VP of Business Development at Pivot Hearing
Chelsea joins Dave this week on the podcast to discuss:
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Her family's long-rooted history in the hearing healthcare industry (spanning 5 generations!)
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The three business ventures her family runs together: Kenwood Hearing, Pivot Hearing, and MyVitalsPro
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The realities of working in a family business and the importance of identifying clear roles and responsibilities
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Identifying gaps in a market based on deep expertise and building solutions to fill those gaps (i.e. MVP)
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What makes MyVitalsPro unique and valuable to a private practice owner
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Small businesses being empowered by tools that had previously been limited to enterprises and the macro trend of technology being, "the great equalizer"
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The types of trends that Chelsea and her team are noticing within their MVP data (i.e. managed care trends)
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How to build a business when you don't have a blueprint or any reference point to take your cues from
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Guest: Craig Kasper, Au.D - Founder & Managing Director of NYHD | Institute for Hearing & Balance
Craig joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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His backstory and how he got into Audiology, gaining a business background as a consultant, and then returning to Audiology to start a private practice
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Craig's process of acquiring business acumen and expertise and then leveraging those skills in a private practice
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The importance of actively building relationships with all types of allied medical professionals and being the expert in all things Audiology (not just hearing aids)
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Takeaways from the 2024 American Academy of Audiology conference
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Dr. Kasper's longtime specialization with tinnitus patients and his initial experience with bimodal neuromodulation tinnitus treatments
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Ways the market might adapt to a growing demand for hearing care services with a flat or diminishing supply of Audiologists
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Mentorship in Audiology - bridging the generational gap and imparting wisdom from one generation to the next
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Guest: Tom Goyne, Au.D. - Owner of Aberdeen Audiology, Adjunct Professor at Salus University, and Founder of Integrative Audiology
Tom joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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Tom's backstory, journey into Audiology, and the three hats he wears as private practice owner, professor, and practice management consultant
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How the field of Audiology and the broader industry that surrounds it has changed across the past 25 years
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What Tom is seeing from his students about the kind of Audiology work that they're seeking post-graduation and how that's shifting from past generations
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The growing significance and impact that auditory training and APD work is having within Tom's clinic
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What types of new roles and responsibilities the Audiologist will take on into the future and how to set oneself up to capitalize on those changes
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Guest: Daniel Romero, Ph.D. - Vestibular Audiologist and Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Daniel joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss some of their main takeaways from the 2024 American Balance Society Conference.
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Emilie Joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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Her backstory, personal experience with a loved one's hearing loss and dementia, and the serendipity surrounding her path to Audiology
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Entering into a profession and being energized about the direction Audiology is heading (closer to the brain)
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"The Big Onion" patient experience and the value of providing a holistic approach
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Earning her Au.D. at Nova Southeastern, her mentors, and identifying which facets of Audiology she wanted to focus on
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Her residency at Weill Cornell and rounding out her skillset with as much specialty hands-on experience as possible
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Endlessly learning and seeking out challenging scenarios to grow from and invest in oneself
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Emilie's perspective on personal brand building and how she envisions using social media throughout her career
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Guest: Jennifer Micacci, Au.D. - Owner of Best Life Hearing Center
Jennifer joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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Her backstory, how she ended up in Audiology, and her path to becoming a practice owner
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The noticeable leaps forward that hearing aid technology has taken in the past decade
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Some of the major differences between Jennifer's experience working inside an ENT office vs. her own private practice
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The rationale behind why she decided on her first location for Best Life Hearing and the considerations that went into expanding to three locations
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The challenges that come from scaling a practice and methods to hone new skills (i.e. cultivating leadership skills)
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The increasing impact managed care is having on Best Life and some ideas that Jennifer is using to help navigate this challenge (i.e. upskilling Audiology Assistants)
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Finding other business owners and entrepreneurs to collaborate with and learn from
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Emerging opportunities and additional revenue generators of the future
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Guest: Tish Gaffney, Au.D. - Professor of Audiology at Nova Southeastern University & President Elect of the American Academy of Audiology
Tish joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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Her backstory, how she ended up in Audiology, and her path to becoming a professor at Nova Southeastern University
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Getting involved early in her career with various professional organizations, which she attributes as a major accelerant to her career's growth & establishing her professional network
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Her specialization in vestibular diagnostics and the growing interest in the vestibular side of Audiology among young professionals
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A brief overview of the trends happening in the nascent field of pediatric vestibular diagnostics
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The American Academy of Audiology's (AAA) goals in 2024 and then beyond during her tenure
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The intersection of Public Health and Audiology and how Hearing Professionals can "extend themselves" by imparting their institutional knowledge to allied medical professionals
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Guest: Dave Fabry, Ph.D. - Chief Hearing Health Officer at Starkey
Dr. Fabry sits down with Dave this week to discuss:
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His start as an aspiring Veterinarian, which ultimately exposed him to Audiology (training Chinchillas to "perform" an audiogram)
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Dave's PhD, time at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and Clinical Fellowship at The Mayo Clinic
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The ACHIEVE study and Dave's big takeaways as both a clinician and researcher
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The emerging use cases for biometric and acoustical data sets that are being captured and logged by Starkey's latest hearing aids
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The evolution from machine learning-based applications to deep neural-net based applications for hearing aids
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The case for why this is the most exciting time for Audiologists and Hearing Professionals broadly speaking, even with the existing and forthcoming challenges on the horizon
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Career advice and words of wisdom from Dr. Fabry
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Guest: Lindsey Koble, Au.D. - Owner of Audiology Always
Lindsey joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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Her backstory and path toward launching a private practice Audiology clinic, Audiology Always, in 2023
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Lessons learned from externing at an ENT clinic and then working as a hearing aid field rep (Signia)
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The value of garnering generalized experience and specialty expertise
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The decision to launch her private practice and the preparation involved
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How to begin attracting patients - high-level strategies and day-to-day tactics
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The evolution of private practice Audiology in today's climate and how to navigate today's challenges/opportunities
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The importance of support staff and upskilling staff into handling more and more of the patient load
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Guest: Frank Wartinger, Au.D. - Owner/Founder of Earmark Hearing Conservation
Frank joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:- Frank's backstory as a musician, experiencing tinnitus at an early age, and his eventual pursuit to become an Audiologist
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Obtaining his Au.D. from Salus Univerity and some of his mentors along the way
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Starting EarMark Hearing Conservation to provide hearing wellness for musicians in the form of healthcare, hearing protection and occupational safety
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The importance of educating the musician community on the importance of hearing health so that musicians serve as vocal advocates and ambassadors of hearing healthcare within the music scene
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Frank becoming a Course Director with the Council for Accreditation in Occupational Hearing Conservation (CAOHC)
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Extending the knowledge of hearing healthcare to allied medical professionals (i.e. occupational therapists) to dramatically expand the provision of hearing wellness
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The role that Frank's podcast, Talking Ears, has on his business
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Some of the highs and low, and learned experiences Frank's had over the first few years of his business
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Guest: Mike Santucci - Founder and Owner of Sensaphonics & ASI Audio
Special Co-Host: A.U. Bankaitis, Ph.D. - Vice President at Oaktree Products
Mike joins Dave & A.U. on the podcast this week to discuss:
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Mike's backstory into Audiology and the origin story of Sensaphonics
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Developing services and products for musicians to help them preserve their hearing while performing
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Building Sensaphonics' own earmold lab to ensure the highest level quality
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ASI Audio's flagship product, 3DME In-Ear Monitor System, and the profound experience it provides hearing impaired musicians
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Sensaphonics' new product, dB Check Pro - a sound level analyzer for musicians to use
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The state of music-based Audiology and Sensaphonics' Gold Circle program
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How to collectively address and communicate safe audio environments for musicians and fans
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The many signed guitars that Mike has donated to the American Academy of Audiology Foundation's Music & Hearing Research Grant Program (and the guitars that A.U. has purchased)
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Guest: Gabby Merchant, Au.D., Ph.D. - Scientist II & Director of the Translational Auditory Physiology and Perception Laboratory at Boys Town National Research Hospital
Gabby joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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Her backstory, obtaining a joint Ph.D. from MIT & Harvard in Speech & Hearing Bioscience, and then acquiring her Au.D. from UMass Amherst
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The many mentors Gabby has had along the way, including Susan Voss and Jill de Villiers
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How and why she decided to leave her home in New England for Nebraska to join Boys Town National Research Hospital
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Her passion and work around wideband tympanometry
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The advantages that wideband tympanometry provides clinicians, especially within the pediatric population
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What it's like working inside a translational research lab and the many reasons that make Boys Town so special to Gabby
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Guest: Nell Rosenberg, M.Ed., M.S., CCC-SLP, LSLS Cert. AVT - National Director of Teleservices
Nell joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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Her backstory, becoming a Speech Language Pathologist, and her path to joining Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech
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The importance of parent & caregiver coaching for children 0-3 years old (shout out to Mama Hu Hears' "My Child has Hearing Loss - Now What?)
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Addressing the issue of the "zip code lottery" through teleservices
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The evolution of Clarke's "T-Visit" teleservices and the types of outcomes they're achieving vs. their in-person outcomes
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Clarke's goal of increasing collaboration with Pediatric Audiologists (referring children to Clarke's T-visit services), School systems, and parents to provide optimal care for children
__________________________________________________________
Follow Clarke on all of its social channels:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clarkeschools/ (@clarkeschools)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clarkeschools/ (@Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/clarkeschools (@clarkeschools)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/clarke-school-for-hearing-and-speech/mycompany/?viewAsMember=true
(@Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech)
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Guest: Dani Rood, Au.D. - Clinical Trainer at Signia
Dani joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
- Her backstory and journey toward becoming an Audiologist
- Her time in Florida spent at Nova Southeastern, Joe Dimaggio Children's Hospital, and the VA
- The value of diversifying her clinical experiences and work settings
- Joining Signia as a Clinical Trainer and a "day in the life of Dr. Rood"
- Empowering Clinicians with "what I wish I would have known when I was in clinic" type of information
- Educating the next generation by working closely with students and recent graduates entering the workforce
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Guests: Amy Trusler, Au.D. & Kristopher Hewitt, H.I.S. - Co-founders of Pacific Audiology Group
Amy & Kris join Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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How the two met, the origin story of Pacific Audiology Group, and the path the company is on
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Building an educational platform specific to Audiology with the goal of developing high-end content
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The learning modules built so far and which modules the company is focusing on next
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The methods of content production that the company has developed, including the use of a "RED" camera (same camera used to film the Hobbit!)
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The next phase of Pacific Audiology Group - democratizing content production for Audiologists through the company's new, "Learn On" program
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Catering to the booming creator economy within Audiology by enabling creators through Pacific Audiology's platform, tools and experience
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Guest: Mike Andreozzi - Former CEO & Owner of Beltone New England; Current Beltone Brand Ambassador; President-Elect of the International Hearing Society
Mike joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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His backstory, growing up in the family business, and learning through osmosis
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Mike's time at Miracle Ear and the early days of hearing health franchising
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Optical supplier, Bausch & Lomb, purchase of Miracle Ear in the early 90's and the aftermath of the acquisition
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Mike joining Beltone in the early 2000's and scaling his New England franchise from 3 locations to 125 stores across 10 states
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The high value Mike placed on fostering a strong company culture and creating a sense of comradery amongst his team
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Identifying potential leaders within the staff and focusing on internal talent development
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Focusing on all the small details which, in aggregate, matter a lot when developing a five star patient experience
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Mike's thoughts on third-party insurance providers, OTC hearing aids, and where the industry is headed in the next 3-5 years
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Guests:
Liz Fuemmeler, Au.D. - Clinical Product Manager - Balance @ Interacoustics; Podcast Host - A Dose of Dizzy
Daniel Romero, Ph.D. - Audiologist & Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences
Liz & Daniel join Dave on the podcast this week to discuss:
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How the Daniel & Liz met and the backstory of starting their podcast, A Dose of Dizzy
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A Dose of Dizzy's "accessible & digestible" podcast format, bridging the research & clinical gap, and catering to niche audiences ("100 true fans")
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The surging interest in Vestibular Audiology amongst the next generation of hearing professionals & the long-term viability that vestibular services provide Audiology clinics
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Takeaways from the 2023 American Balance Society conference held in February & some of the most exciting innovations taking place within Vestibular Audiology
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Podcasting as a way to connect with like-minded individuals from all around your niche/industry
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Guest: Lindsey Jorgensen - Professor, Chair, and Clinic Director at University of South Dakota
Dr. Lindsey Jorgensen joins Dave on this week's episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast to discuss:
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Lindsey's backstory and motivation for pursuing Audiology and her time at The University of Pittsburgh obtaining her Au.D. and Ph.D.
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Lindsey's many hats that she wears as clinician, researcher, and professor at the University of South Dakota
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Lindsey's work with traumatic brain injuries and combat veterans
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The interplay between Neurology and Audiology, and Audiology's significance with regard to dementia
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Lindsey's speaking tour around the country about methods used by Hearing Professionals to verify and validate the performance of hearing aids
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How Audiologists can differentiate themselves within their market on the basis of holistic patient care
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Guest: Sarah McAlexander, Au.D. - Pediatric Audiologist at Texas Hearing Institute
Dr. Sarah McAlexander joins Dave on this week's episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast to discuss:
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Sarah's backstory and motivation for pursuing her Audiology doctoral degree through Vanderbilt
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Sarah's immersion into the world of pediatric audiology and newborn hearing screenings
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Sarah's research around "loss-to-follow up rates" in newborn screenings that she presented at the Early Hearing Detection & Intervention (EHDI) conference
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Completing to Cochlear Implant Training course and seeking out ways to gain specialty expertise in all different areas of Audiology
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Building rapport and engaging with potential mentors and professional colleagues who you can collaborate with
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The realities of one's professional journey, moving from one job to another, and garnering a variety of experience along the way
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Guests: Nichole Kingham, Au.D & Joe Furness - Founders of Audiology Academy
Dr. Nichole Kingham and Joe Furness join Dave on this week's episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast to discuss:
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What Audiology Academy is and the backstory of how Nichole and Joe built the business and platform
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The first phase of the business and the initial learning module around Audiology Assistants
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The critical need for support roles within the hearing health setting, and the types of day-to-day tasks that can be delegated to support roles
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Phase two of Audiology Academy becoming a platform for other Audiologists and hearing professionals to layer their expert training modules on
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The types of courses available within Audiology Academy today and the types of modules that will be added soon
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Guest: Ali Vega, Au.D. - Owner of Complete Hearing & Balance
Topic: Private Practice Audiology, Serendipity, and Saying Yes
Dr. Ali Vega joins Dave on this week's episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast to discuss:
- Her backstory, motivation for pursuing Audiology, and experience owning a private practice in the Pacific Northwest
- Audiology's transition from a master's level degree to a doctoral level degree & Ali being in one of the first cohorts of doctoral-level Audiologists in 2001
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Recognizing serendipitous occasions and being willing to say "yes" to risk taking
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"Accidental" entrepreneurialism and the willingness to never stop learning
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Figuring out what aspects of your business that you want to own (i.e. Ali's love for Radio advertising), and outsourcing the rest to vetted partners
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Adding a balance offering by partnering with the American Institute of Balance
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Ali's experience scaling her practice from one location to three
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Guest: Rachel Magann Faivre, Au.D. - Owner of Ash Audiology
Topic: Entrepreneurism in Audiology
Dr. Rachel Magann Faivre joins Dave on this week's episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast to discuss:
- Her backstory, motivation for pursuing Audiology, and her professional journey thus far
- Entrepreneurship and business planning in Audiology
- Specific tips on how to actively network in your local community and grow your professional network
- The importance of constantly getting out of your comfort zone in order to expand your comfort zone
- Rachel's motivation for starting her own private practice, Ash Audiology
- Why a mobile-first private practice was conducive to Rachel's lifestyle
- How Rachel's business planning process worked with specific planning tactics
- How she got her first patient and continues to grow her practice
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Guest: Lori Zitelli, Au.D. - Managing Audiologist at University Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)
Topic: Maximizing the Audiologist's Reach & Impact
Dr. Lori Zitelli joins Dave on this week's episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast to discuss:
- Lori's backstory, Pittsburgh roots and motivation for pursuing Audiology
- Lori's mentor, Dr. Catherine Palmer, and the various projects that the two have developed together
- Interventional Audiology and the benefits of "enlisting" other medical professionals to be advocates for hearing healthcare
- Way to utilize non-custom amplification solutions and how these type of solutions can maximize the Audiologist's impact
- Lori's passion for tinnitus, the ups-and-downs with treating patients with tinnitus, and helping to usher in the next cohort of Audiologists specializing in tinnitus therapy through the course she teaches at UPMC
- How Lori is incorporating telehealth with her patients and how the pandemic has shifted her thinking of how telehealth can be used within Audiology
- UPMC's upcoming plans revolving around mobile Audiology
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Guest: Brandi Smiley, Au.D. - Owner of Onsite Mobile Audiology
Topic: Building a Mobile Audiology Clinic from Scratch
Dr. Brandi Smiley joins Dave for this week's episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast to discuss:
- Her backstory, motivation to become an Audiologist, and professional journey as an Audiologist
- Her time working at the VA and within the Educational Audiology setting
- The pandemic serving as the catalyst to starting her Mobile Audiology Clinic, Onsite Audiology
- Why mobile Audiology?
- Creating a "Tiny Home" specifically designed to be a mobile clinic
- Providing Audiological services to some of the most impoverished parts of Georgia
- How she established her initial patient base and is expanding her business
- The value to adding new services, such as APD therapy, to her offering
- Giving back and being a mentor to the next generation
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Guest: Jason Leyendecker, Au.D. - Owner of Audiology Concepts
Topic: Successfully Scaling an Audiology Private Practice
Dr. Jason Leyendecker joins Dave for this week's episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast to discuss:
- His backstory and professional journey as an Audiologist
- The decision to go into private practice
- Taking over an existing private practice clinic and the challenges associated with it
- Scaling a private practice to seven locations
- Expanding into new services while scaling the practice to broaden the prospective patient pool
- Focusing on leadership development and some of the specific tactics that Jason has used to become a better leader
- The importance of hiring and retaining good workers and sharing some different ideas to be more successful in hiring
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Guest: Blake Cadwell - Owner & Founder of www.Soundly.com
Topic: Redesigning the Start of the Hearing Health Journey
Blake joins Dave this week on the podcast to discuss:
- His backstory and personal experience wearing hearing aids
- The motivation for creating www.soundly.com and the goal of the website
- Widespread mask usage during the pandemic serving as a catalyst to people realizing how dependent they are on lip reading
- The sheer pervasiveness of hearing loss and why it's not fully in the mainstream's zeitgeist
- The potential upside of consumers being exposed to hearing health functionality in their consumer earbuds
- The importance of the hearing health professional in the OTC era
- Soundly.com's intention to be a starting point for consumers to research their potential options and do their diligence
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Guest: Kathleen Wallace, AuD - Owner of Kathleen Wallace, AuD; Head of Provider Education at Tuned; Adjunct Professor at CUNY
Topic: Building the Hearing Healthcare Practice of the Future
Kathleen joins Dave for the return of the podcast to discuss her new private practice and the motivation to start it. The two discuss:
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Starting a private practice in 2022 and modern day considerations
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The maturation of Mobile Audiology and TeleAudiology
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Kathleen's time at CUNY and some of her key mentors and influences
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Online content creation, personal brand building and combatting imposter phenomenon
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Building an online "content" resume to attract in-person opportunities
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Using social media to effectively generate new business
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For episode 100, Dave sits down with 15 past guests to get a sense of what's on each of their radars and what's exciting about their area of focus.
Guests:
- Andy Bellavia
- Liz Fuemmeler, AuD
- Amyn Amlani, Ph.D.
- Angela Alexander, AuD
- Brian Taylor, AuD
- Ashley Hughes, AuD
- Brent Edwards, Ph.D.
- Kat Penno, AuD
- Bret Kinsella
- Natalie Phillips, AuD
- Geoff Cooling
- Ryan Kraudel
- Jill Davis, AuD
- Karl Strom
- Grace Sturdivant, AuD
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Guest: Madison Levine, Founder & Owner of Levine Hearing; Board Certified Hearing Instrument Specialist (BC-HIS)
Topic: Endlessly Optimizing the Hearing Health Patient Experience
Madison joins Dave this week to share her story of launching and growing a thriving independent hearing health private practice. Madison details why she started her private practice, some of the major milestones across the first seven years, and how she has been increasingly upping the standard of care within her clinic.
The two discuss some of the key considerations when starting and growing a private practice, such as how to find your first patient, as well as how Madison is differentiating her practice in her market by leveraging new services and offerings.
As a BC-HIS, Madison shares her perspective of how Audiologists and Hearing Instrument Specialists can collaborate with one another to provide a strong collective offering to prospective patients.
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Guest: Christina Coppola, AuD - Vestibular Audiologist at the American Institute of Balance
Topic: Designing the American Institute of Balance's MatchMe Program
Christina joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss her backstory, motivation for entering into Audiology, why she gravitated toward the vestibular side of the profession, her residency at the American Institute of Balance, and how she helped to design & implement AIB's new "MatchMe" Program where the AIB helps to train students in clinical vestibular audiology and connect students with AIB Centers of Specialty Care for the student's externship.
The two discuss the advantages for young Audiologists entering the field to gain specialty experience and how the AIB is helping to foster and facilitate that experience. In addition, the two discuss why MatchMe is so advantageous for existing practices who might be interested in obtaining young talent that specializes in vestibular audiology and are unsure where to locate said talent.
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Guest: Nancy M. Williams - President of Auditory Insight
Topic: Creating Market Development in Hearing Healthcare
Nancy joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss a variety of topics including her personal story of living with hearing loss, her journey and motivation for starting Auditory Insight, and some of the key takeaways from some of Auditory Insight's recent research notes.
Much of the conversation revolves around the longstanding and pervasive stigma associated with hearing loss, and Nancy shares some sources of inspiration that the hearing health industry might look toward for ideas on how to effectively combat this major obstacle that impedes so many from treating their hearing loss.
Transcript: here
References:
- Ebrahimi-Madiseh article reference: https://journals.lww.com/ear-hearing/Abstract/2020/11000/What_Influences_Decision_Making_for_Cochlear.30.aspx
2.Expressed Barriers reference: 5 Balachandra S, Tolisano AM, Qazi S, Hunter JB. Self-Identified Patient Barriers to Pursuit of Cochlear Implantation. Otol Neurotol. 2021;42(10S):S26-S32. doi:10.1097/MAO.0000000000003376
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Guests: D'Anne Rudden, AuD; Susan Sheehy, AuD; Maura Chippendale, AuD; Yasmin Battat, AuD; Mary Thorpe, AuD
Topic: Hearing the Call: Recapping a Life-Changing Humanitarian Trip to Jordan
This week on the Future Ear Radio podcast, Dave sits down with five inspiring Audiologists to breakdown their recent mission trip to the country of Jordan, where these five women + a number of others provided hearing health services for some of the most underserved people in the world.
During the episode, they discuss:
- Expectations leading into the trip and post-trip takeaways
- What the days were like and the direct impact they made on the refugees that they served
- The efficacy that "putting a hand up, not out" has on combatting burn out
- The surprising amount of collaboration across the AuDs that were there
- Learning from the people they served and the culture that they were embedded in
- Imparting knowledge on the students that they were working with, so as to create continuity with their mission
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Guest: AU Bankaitis, PhD - Audiologist; Vice President, Oaktree Products
Topic: Imposter Phenomenon, The Samuel F. Lybarger Award, and Owning Your Success
AU joins Dave on the podcast for the first in-person episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast. AU shares her Audiology career journey, some of the major influences on her career trajectory and milestones along the way, and her recent Samuel F. Lybarger award (awarded to an individual who has made important contributions to research, engineering, or other technological achievements within the field of audiology).
Throughout the conversation, AU discusses her struggles with imposter phenomenon. She details what imposter phenomenon is, how she has worked through it using a variety of different methods, and the importance of owning her own success.
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Guest: Liz Fuemmeler, AuD - Vestibular and Concussion Audiologist at Hearing and Balance Specialists of Kansas City; Co-host of "A Dose of Dizzy" Podcast
Topic: Vestibular Audiology, Specialization, and the Motivation to Never Stop Learning
Liz joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss her work in vestibular audiology across the past few years after receiving her AuD. At Liz's clinic, she has helped to implement a concussion protocol and discusses this emerging new facet of science and Audiology's role within it. Liz shares the role that Audiologists play with regards to concussions, why Audiologists are uniquely positioned to help diagnose concussions, and how it helps to broaden the scope of Audiology.
In addition, Liz and Dave discuss the topic of personal brand building and the ways in which Liz has always challenged herself to grow professionally and the dividends that those efforts have paid. The two chat about podcasting, being a young professional in the Hearing Health industry, and the motivation to never stop pushing yourself to keep learning.
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Guest: Grace Sturdivant - Audiologist and Founder of OtoPro Technologies
Topic: OtoPro: A Fresh Take on the Business of Hearing Conservation
Grace joins Dave on the podcast this week to share the story of how she built her company, OtoPro Technologies, and the path she took to success.
OtoPro represents an innovative business model and brand built entirely around hearing conservation. As Grace describes, OtoPro is designed to provide individuals with custom hearing protection for all types of lifestyles ranging from hunting, construction, industrial work, motorcycling and so on.
The two discuss how her business model works, the network of hearing professionals that she uses to help facilitate the earmold impressions, her success building her brand, the rapid growth of OtoPro, and her upcoming appearance on Steve Rinella's Meat Eater podcast.
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Guest: Michelle Hu, AuD - Pediatric Audiologist and Founder of "Mama Hu Hears"
Topic: Building the "Mama Hu Hears" Brand
Michelle joins Dave on the podcast this week to share her backstory and how she developed her popular, "Mama Hu Hears" online persona.
Michelle's Mama Hu Hears Instagram page has garnered roughly 10,000 followers, and serves as a medium for Michelle to communicate ways she navigates her own DHH journey, as well as a forum for her to impart wisdom as a hard of hearing mother and Pediatric Audiologist.
The two discuss using social media effectively to generate a more outsized impact, the most common questions and feedback that Michelle receives on her social channels, Michelle's experience of being fit with a cochlear implant 15 years ago, and some of her takeaways of life before and after her implant.
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Guest: Shadi Chakoutahi - Founder of Staffing Proxy
Topic: A Recruiter's Perspective on the Current State of the Hearing Health Industry
Shadi joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss the current labor market within the hearing health industry and some key insights that can be gleaned from her perspective.
The two discuss the changing nature of employee expectations, which has been altered by the pandemic, as well as what it means to be an, "employer of choice." On the flip side, the two chat about the prospects within the industry for those entering into the hearing health labor force or moving from one industry job to another.
Shadi shares her unique perspective as someone who frequently speaks with a wide variety of employers and prospective employees in every facet of the hearing health industry. In addition, Shadi shares some of the areas that concern her with the current state of the hearing health labor pool, as well as some reasons to be optimistic about the way that the hearing health industry is evolving.
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Guest: Erik Sorenson - Co-Founder of HearWorks
Title: Understanding the Battle Being Waged Outside of the Hearing Health Clinic
Erik joins Dave on the podcast this week to share his backstory of his days owning and operating an ad agency, the path that led him to the world of hearing health, the key learnings of owning seven brick & mortar clinics, and the genesis of how and why HearWorks was created.
The two discuss how today's hearing health patient journey begins outside of the clinic and talk through various patient acquisition and retention strategies that are becoming increasingly relevant in today's hearing health market.
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Guest: Amyn Amlani, PhD - President of Otolithic Consulting
Topic: Enhancing the Hearing Professional's Value Proposition
Dr. Amlani joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss the current state of the hearing professional's value proposition and ways that the value prop can ultimately be elevated by the provider.
The two discuss how and why this era of hearing health is different from eras in the past, the increasing demand of hearing-related services, and how hearing professionals should be preparing and positioning themselves to capture said demand.
Amyn and Dave talk about how the ways both retail and medical hearing health settings are evolving and where some of the key opportunities might lie for professionals into the future.
Toward the end of the discussion, Amyn shares his thoughts on the growing labor shortage of hearing professionals and some of the ways that the hearing health industry will need to solve the equation of how to serve an increasing amount of demand with a dwindling pool of labor.
Transcript: here
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Guest: Joe Sakumura, AuD - Director of Centers of Specialty Care at The American Institute of Balance
Topic: The Case for Becoming an American Institute of Balance Center of Specialty Care
Joe joins Dave on the podcast to kick off a new year of audio and hearing health-related discussions. During this conversation, Joe shares why he believes Audiologists should consider implementing a suite of vestibular service offerings into their clinic, and explains how The American Institute of Balance (AIB) can support Audiologists to implement, monetize and run their vestibular offering through AIB's Center of Specialty Care (CSC) program.
The two discuss all of the details of the AIB's CSC program, including the process of getting set up, as well as managing the day-to-day operations. Joe also shares some of the success stories that hearing practices are having post-CSC implementation and how including a robust and comprehensive vestibular offering is allowing Audiologists to differentiate their clinics and elevate their standing with allied medical professionals.
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Guest: Kane Simms - Founder of VUX World
Topic: The State of Conversational AI Heading into 2022
For the last podcast of 2021, Kane Simms joins Dave to provide the listeners with an update on everything that's currently transpiring within the conversational AI space and where Kane believes the technology is moving toward in 2022.
As Dave mentions at the beginning of the conversation, the reason that conversational AI is relevance to the world of hearing healthcare is because of the increasing feasibility of utilizing conversational AI with one's hearing device (hearing aids or hearables). So, it's important to stay up-to-date on the core technology and understand the current roadblocks that need to be navigated to make this all a reality.
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Guest: Jill Davis, AuD - Doctor of Audiology and Owner of Victory Hearing & Balance
Topic: Successfully Implementing Cognivue into a Private Practice
Jill joins Dave on the podcast this week to share the backstory of why she decided to implement Cognivue's computerized cognitive screener in her Audiology clinic, and some of the major takeaways from the process of doing so.
She describes the process of implementing the device, how she positions it within the patient's visit, the battery of other tests and evaluations that she pairs it with, and how she educates her patients on the results. As the two discuss, Jill is able to formulate a much more wholistic understanding of what the patient is experiencing and is able to tailor her treatment plans more appropriately.
As Jill mentions, one of the biggest advantages that she's seen with implementing Cognivue into her clinic is that it has quite dramatically helped to increase her physician patient referrals. Considerably more patients are coming through Jill's doors via their primary care doctor's recommendation.
As has been the theme on the podcast this year, Cognivue provides Audiologists with yet another unique way to differentiate and elevate their services to stand out from the competition.
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Guest: Paul Harkness - CEO of Lantos Technologies
Topic: The 30 Year Hearing Industry Veteran
Paul joins Dave on the podcast this week to share his backstory of working in the hearing health industry for the past 30 years. Paul details his journey in the industry, citing all the various companies and roles he's served, and what industry-related moments stand out the most in his mind along his 30 year journey.
The two discuss Paul's newest role as CEO of Lantos Technologies and the vision for the company. Lantos is a 3D ear scanning company that uses a proprietary balloon membrane to map one's ear canal. Upon completion of the scan, hearing care providers would be able to then quickly send the patients scan to the manufacturer to create some type of custom earpiece. Paul describes the advantages of Lantos' 3D scans, both for provider and patient, as well as the new business model that the company has recently implemented.
Transcript: here
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Guest: Dawn Heiman, AuD - Owner of Advanced Audiology Consultants, CEO of EntreAudiology, Podcast Host of The Hearing Wellness Journey, President-Elect of the Academy of Doctors of Audiology (ADA)
Topic: Differentiating via an Expansion of Audiological Services
Dawn joins Dave on the podcast this week to share her backstory of becoming an Audiologist, private practice owner, podcaster and now, the president-elect of ADA.
Dawn shares her perspective of how the industry is evolving and why she believes it's so important for hearing professionals to find ways to differentiate themselves in the market on the basis of expertise. The two discuss a variety of avenues of care and specialties that can be honed in on, such as cognition, tinnitus, vestibular, and APD-based services, and how these specialty services can be financially viable.
Transcript: here
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Guest: Jon Suen, AuD - PhD Candidate at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing; Predcotoral Trainee at Johns Hopkins Cochlear Center for Hearing & Public Health
Topic: Building a Bridge Between Audiology, Gerontology, Nursing and Public Health
Jon joins the podcast this week to discuss his personal story of how he wound up at Johns Hopkins. Jon's story is a fascinating one, as it involves a winding path that includes passion for American Sign Language, Gallaudet University for his AuD, and a stint with The Peace Corps. Ultimately, Jon found his way to Johns Hopkins where he now is mentored by folks like Dr. Frank Lin and Jennifer Wenzel, PhD.
Jon's work focuses on the intersection between Audiology, Gerontology, Nursing and Public Health. As Jon and Dave discuss, the community-based approach to Audiology that Jon is studying and helping to define, provides for a unique, collaborative opportunity for Audiologists to work within a broader team of healthcare professionals.
For example, Jon describes a potential for audiologists to work in multidisciplinary programs like CAPABLE, whose goal is to support older adults “aging-in-place.” The team is comprised of a Nurse, Occupational Therapist, and Handy Person (who helps with home modifications). An audiologist could contribute very meaningfully to such a team, though most are currently not yet trained to consider social determinants of health for older adults with hearing loss.
Jon and Dave discuss how community based approaches to Audiology may allow for more opportunities for the Audiologist to help train and impart their expertise on fellow health professionals & community-based team members, which might ultimately help to expand the influence and benefits of Audiology to the broader population.
Transcript: here
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Guest: Laurel Christensen, PhD - Chief Audiology Officer at GN Group
Topic: Charting the Past 30 Years in Hearing Aid Innovation
Laurel sits down with Dave on the podcast this week to share her journey of going from working in her Dad's ENT practice as a teen to earning her PhD and ultimately joining GN Group, where she now serves as the company's Chief Audiology Officer.
Along with sharing her story and some of her most important mentors along the way (specifically Larry Humes), Laurel also discusses her time at Etymotic and the outsize impact Mead Killion has made on the world of hearing health.
The two discuss some of the big breakthroughs that have occurred within hearing aid technology dating back to the late 80's, and look at the current state of the devices and discuss the implications and use cases derived from modern breakthroughs that are underway.
Transcript: here
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Guests: Dr. Elaine Saunders, Co-Founder of Blamey & Saunders (acquired by Sonova); Kat Penno - Director of Hearing Health at Nuheara
Topic: 10 Years of Pioneering Telehealth & Remote Audiology
Dr. Elaine Saunders and Kat Penno join the podcast this week to look back at the past, present and future of Telehealth in the Audiology space. The three discuss Elaine's pioneering work at Blamey & Saunders, which was a remote-first, telehealth based Audiology company launched in 2011.
During the conversation, Elaine shares about what growing a telehealth company was like a decade ago, how much has changed at the infrastructure level, how much more feasible telehealth has become, and ultimately, the vision for how telehealth will become more widely adopted and more viable for hearing professionals into the future.
Transcript: here
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Guest: Nick Morgan-Jones - Butterfly Audio
Topic: Sound Enhancing Wearables that Inspire People
Nick sits down with Dave on the podcast this week to discuss his passion project, Butterfly Audio, which is an attempt at totally reimagining "hearing aids." Nick, who was diagnosed with high-frequency hearing loss at 10 years old (now 28 years old), describes his own personal journey with hearing aids, which began with him deciding to abandon his prescribed hearing aids for the first 10 years of his diagnosis due to the social stigma associated with them.
According to Nick, the problem that young people with hearing loss face is a market that largely caters to older adults. Everything from the advertising to the ways in which the products are described (hearing aids) are tailored toward folks with age-related hearing adults. As a result, young people are forced to treat their hearing losses with devices that have inherent connotations with old age.
Nick believes that the design of the devices have almost uniformly followed suit with progressively becoming smaller and smaller. Why do hearing aids need to be "invisible?" Yes, some users want discreet devices, and that market is already being served with a variety of offerings, but as the two discuss, there are a variety of advantages to making devices clearly visible, and utilizing novel form factors and device positioning.
As a designer by trade, Nick is designing, prototyping and attempting to build his own custom, "sound enhancing wearables," (again, note the change in language used) that he personally would feel inspired to use. As he notes, he's going to need help, so if his message resonates, his door is open and he welcomes you to connect with him.
Twitter: @ButterflyAudio_
LinkedIn: Nick Morgan-Jones
Transcript: here
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Guest: Carl Robinson, CEO of Rumble Studio and Host of the Voice Tech Podcast
Topic: Rumble Studio: Creating Better Audio Production Tools
Carl joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss what he and his team are building at Rumble Studio and have a broad-based conversation about the innovation occurring in the audio production space. As the two discuss, audio is in its infancy as a medium and like any form of media is undergoing a significant transformation as it matures. We're seeing this in real-time as new audio formats are being introduced and popularized, such as social audio.
What Carl's team is aiming to build is a platform that enables asynchronous podcast production, enabling an entirely new format of audio production. With Rumble, creators are able to generate a full podcast episode through an asynchronous exchange between host and guest(s), allowing for each side to incrementally build out the conversation, in their own time. As Carl and Dave discuss, this type of format lends itself to a number of interesting possibilities that live podcasting isn't well situated for, ultimately agreeing that we're entering into a new era of audio with a variety of new formats of content emerging.
Transcript: here
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Guest: Brad Stewart, AuD - Owner of ClearLife Hearing Care; Co-Founder of AuDflow
Topic: Leveling Up the Hearing Care Experience
Brad joins Dave this week to share his experience of working in private practice audiology for the last 10 years and how he views the evolution underway in the hearing health industry. They discuss Brad's hearing care consulting company, AuDflow, which is designed to help practices re-think their total patient experience - physical & digital - using a variety of innovative tools and services.
For independent private practitioners competing against a slew of new competitors, from an increasing amount of big-box retailers to online sellers, it's important to match parity when it comes to the things that the new competition does well, such as digital marketing and automation. As the two discuss, the key to success into the future might be a combination of blending the things that are appealing of the new competition, with the non-commodifiable expertise inherent from one's education. It's then a matter of properly fusing the two together to create an overall patient experience that's harder and harder for the new competition to replicate or differentiate from themselves.
Transcript: here
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Guest: Angela Alexander, AuD - Owner of Auditory Processing Network and APDsupport.com
Topic: The Journey to Presenting about Auditory Processing Disorder at TEDx
Angela joins Dave on the podcast this week to share her journey of preparing for and ultimately presenting at TedX around Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). Angela describes how she landed the opportunity, the ups and downs that went along with preparing, the watershed moment that led to her piecing her talk together, and how everything culminated together to present a killer presentation.
Angela's Audiology passion revolves around APD, and during this conversation, she shares the key points that she communicated through her talk and why APD is such an important facet to the future of Audiology.
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Guest: Andy Bellavia - Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp
Topic: A New Era in Hearing Loss Solutions
Andy joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss the continually evolving hearables and hearing health landscape. The two discuss the recent presidential executive order that urges the FDA to accelerate its timeline with issuing its over-the-counter hearing aid guidelines, and discuss why what's happening in the hearables space might ultimately supersede the OTC hearing aid act.
The two go into depth about the three headed beast that stands in the way of hearing solution adoption - price, stigma and friction - and how each are systematically being chipped away at by technological innovation. In addition, Andy and Dave discuss BragiOS - a hearable-specific operating system - and the recent partnerships that Bragi has announced pertaining to BragiOS.
Finally, the two discuss the impact of voice technology to the long-term hearables trajectory, and the way that CEO's at Bragi, MiMi, Skullcandy, and Audioburst are all thinking about voice's role with hearables into the future.
Transcript: here
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Guest: Brian Taylor, AuD - Director of Clinical Content Development at Signia
Topic: The Upside of the Increasing Amount of Hearing Solution Optionality
Brian joins Dave this week on the podcast to continue the recent string of conversations based around the evolving hearing health landscape. The two discuss where devices like Signia's Active hearing aids fit into the market, which look like earbuds but function as hearing aids. In addition, the two discuss how we're moving toward a future where it will be harder and harder to distinguish between hearing aids and hearables, which may ultimately play a significant role in the reduction of stigma.
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Guests: Dr. Kim Cavitt, Owner of Audiology Resources; Geoff Cooling, Co-Founder and Editor of Hearing Aid Know
Topic: How Hearing Professionals Can Thrive in an Expanding Hearing Health Market
Kim and Geoff join Dave on the podcast this week to continue the discussions had on the podcast recently about the accelerating pace of change occurring in the hearing health market. The three discuss all the recent announcements (Bose's hearing aid, Jabra's hearing aid, Sonova + Sennheiser, Jacoti + Qualcomm, & Apple's "Conversation Boost") and discuss how hearing professionals can insert themselves properly into the burgeoning mild-moderate side of the market.
As Kim describes, the key might ultimately revolve around the idea of serving as a "navigator" on the patients' hearing aid journey, which might ultimately not include device sales, but rather compensation through services. Therefore, the three discuss how professionals will need to alter their revenue models and service delivery models in order to participate in this portion of the market.
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Guest: Carolina Milanesi - President & Principal Analyst at Creative Strategies; Founder of Heart of Tech
Topic: Google + Samsung + Fitbit = A True Apple Watch Competitor?
Carolina joins Dave this week on the podcast to discuss the news coming out of Google's I/O developer conference that Samsung and Google will be merging their smartwatch platforms (Samsung's Tizen and Google's Wear OS) into a unified smartwatch platform, Wear. As the two discuss, when you factor in Google's acquisition of Fitbit in January of 2021, what we're really seeing now is essentially Google, Samsung and Fitbit banding together and pooling their resources to combat Apple's dominance of the smartwatch sector.
Google provides it's operating system, first party applications (i.e. Maps & YouTube Music), and Google Assistant, while Samsung provides its core competence - excellent hardware manufacturing and device proliferation, and Fitbit brings the unique use cases built around Fitness and health.
As Carolina describes, this trio of companies unified together in a cohesive offering might finally offer a truly compelling Android smartwatch option that has the potential to scale and compete head-to-head with the Apple Watch. As the two discuss, the Android ecosystem desperately needs adequate peripheral devices to complement the android handsets, as Apple's ecosystem continues to deepen its moat and switching costs via its wearables and services.
Finally, the two talk through the broader implications of these moves, especially as it relates to the future of all wearable devices, including hearables and AR glasses, and the unique preventative health use cases that wearables continue to migrate toward.
Transcript: here
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Guests: Abram Bailey, AuD - CEO of Hearing Tracker; Steve Taddei, AuD - Professor at Rock Valley College, Audiologist at Center for Sight & Hearing, and Host of the Hearing Tracker Podcast
Topic: The Hearing Health Market Heats Up: Sonova + Sennheiser & Bose Hearing Aids
Abram and Steve make their debut on the podcast to help break down the recent news of Sonova buying Sennheiser's consumer audio division and Bose introducing its self-fit hearing aids to the market. The three talk through the big picture of what's currently underway in the hearing health industry, what to expect in the short-term, and how hearing professionals can insert themselves into the burgeoning world of mild-moderate solutions in a meaningful and practical way.
In addition, Abram and Steve share the backstory of The Hearing Tracker Podcast and why they decided to pivot the show to a more, NPR-style themed format, and talk about the growing ecosystem of creators in this industry.
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Guests: Natalie Nelson, AuD - Clinical Trainer at Phonak; Ashley Hughes, AuD - Audiologist at Interacoustics
Topic: Navigating Student Loans & Negotiating Effectively: A Guide for Young Hearing Pros
Natalie and Ashley join Dave on the podcast to share their hard-earned wisdom around navigating student debt and utilizing collaborative negotiation in the work-world. For students and young hearing professionals entering into the first or second industry job, these two help to illustrate real tactics one can use to efficiently pay down student debt. Many of the tactics mentioned through the convo revolve around learning how to properly negotiate at the onset of one's career.
As the three discuss, the idea of collaborative negotiation is that you're working to find a win-win between you and your employer. Therefore, it's important that in order to justify asking for additional benefits or higher salary, but also provide meaningful ways to compensate for your ask. Natalie and Ashley share a wide variety of options that one might offer (such as social media management or handling walk-ins), as well as ways to practice the one's negotiating skills in everyday life so that it may come a bit more naturally in time.
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Guest: Collin Borns, Head of Business Development (US) at Speechly
Topic: Speechly: Enabling Voice User Interfaces Everywhere
This week on the podcast, Dave is joined by his old friend Collin Borns to discuss his new venture as Head of Business Development at Speechly. The two chat about the unique capabilities of Speechly, honing in on its ability to process natural language and speech recognition simultaneously, which can dramatically enhance mobile and web experiences, such as eCommerce shopping. The two talk about the current state of voice tech and how mass-enabling sophisticated voice user interfaces as a layer on websites and mobile apps might help to further accelerate the overall adoption of voice assistants.
Transcript: here
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Guests: Kat Penno - Audiologist & Founder of the Hearing Collective; Andy Bellavia, Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp
Topic: The Hearing Collective & Pushing the Boundaries of Hearing Health
Kat and Andy return to the podcast this week to continue their discussion from 6 months ago during episode 48. This time, the three discuss Blamey & Saunders, an Australian based company that pioneered a variety of remote services and online offerings, which segues into Kat sharing more about her business, The Hearing Collective, which was largely inspired by Blamey & Saunders.
Much of the conversation revolves around the notion of constantly pushing the boundaries in hearing health and honing in on various ways to do so. The group speaks about utilizing new software and providing patients with the latest and greatest ancillary solutions to enhance the overall value proposition and increase the patient's satisfaction.
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Guests: Nancy Tye-Murray, PhD - Founder & CEO of Amptify; Chris Cardinal - President & COO of Amptify; Amyn Amlani, PhD - Owner of Otolithic Consulting; Bob Traynor, AuD - Longtime Audiologist & Private Practice Owner at Audiology Associates
Topic: Future of Hearing Health Panel Discussion - Business Model Innovation
This week's episode features the second panel discussion that Dave moderated at the Future of Hearing Health virtual conference in March. During this panel discussion, the four panelists + Dave as the moderator, discuss the evolving business models in the hearing health industry and the future economics pertaining to the hearing healthcare provider.
Topics discussed throughout this conversation include: new technologies and ancillary offerings to include in one's scope of service, new methods of testing and gathering patient data, the role of remote services and different ways to bill for them, re-examining the AuD program and the student debt dilemma, the growing demand for assistants and technicians, business acumen for HCPs, how professional service might be layered onto the OTC offering, and enhanced training programs for specialty offerings.
Episode Transcript: here
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Guests: Annette Mazevski, PhD - Manager of Technology Assessment at Oticon; Kevin Setiz-Paquette, AuD - Director of Phonak Audiology Research Center; Brent Edwards, PhD - Director at National Acoustic Labs; Ryan Kraudel - VP Marketing at Valencell
Topic: Future of Hearing Health Panel Discussion - Hearing Device Innovation
This week features a panel discussion that was recorded in March 2021 for the Future of Hearing Health Virtual Conference. During this panel discussion, the four panelists + Dave as the moderator, discuss the current state of hearing device innovation, and look toward what's on the horizon for hearables and hearing aids.
Topics discussed throughout this conversation include: artificial intelligence-based hearing solutions, biometric sensor integration and sensor fusion, the role and impact of the Big Tech (Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc) on hearing health, Bluetooth connectivity and proliferation, interconnected healthcare solutions, the rising status of hearing care providers in the broader healthcare ecosystem, and the trajectory of online and remote services.
Episode Transcript
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Guest: Lena Kyman, AuD, Clinical Trainer at Phonak
Topic: Life as a Clinical Trainer
Lena joins Dave on the podcast this week to share her journey of becoming an audiologist, working inside a private practice for six years, and now working as a clinical trainer who spends her time training fellow audiologists on Phonak's technology.
Lena provides a unique perspective derived from her time working in private practice and now within one of the major hearing aid manufacturers. She shares some of the most frequently discussed questions and issues that are had by many audiologists, many of which pertain to Bluetooth connectivity. The two discuss why Bluetooth is a double-edged sword, proving difficult and frustrating in some instances, but a true enabler for a better patient experience and point out that it's part of the patient expectation here in 2021.
The conversation spans many different aspects of the valuable role that clinical trainers play in the field of hearing health.
Episode Transcript
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Guests: Giles Tongue, CEO at Chatable Apps; Andy Bellavia, Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp
Topic: The Quest for Near-Zero Latency in Hearables
Giles and Andy join Dave this week on the podcast to discuss one of the opportunities that AI-based hearing solutions present, solving speech-in-noise, as well as the biggest challenge that these solutions face, which is latency.
For a long time, solving speech-in-noise has been at the top of the list of many hearing professionals' wish lists, and finally, we might be at the onset of a new wave of solutions that can harness the power of artificial intelligence to help solve this issue. These solutions however, rely on complex calculations and processing power, which can cause latency, or a time-delay while the sound is being processed.
The three talk through some of the ways and techniques that latency can be reduced to the point where it's indistinguishable by the wearer, and how these kind of solutions might ultimately manifest in the market.
Episode Transcript
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Dave is joined this week by Bradley Metrock, CEO of Project Voice. In January, Bradley kicked off a tour of 35 cities across the US, Project Voice Coast-to-Coast, where he has been stopping at each destination to meet with members of the voice community. At the point of recording, Bradley had just hit his 25th city, St. Louis, where he sat down with me to share what this experience has been like.
During the discussion, Bradley shares stories from the road, including some of who he's had a chance to meet with, what it's been like traveling during the pandemic, the disparity between cities at this point in time, the future of events, the role of virtual events today and into the future, and more. A long conversation the spans a wide variety of topics.
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Guests: David Eagleman, Neuroscientist at Stanford and Co-founder/CEO of Neosensory; Jacque Scholl, clinical Audiologist; Kevin Liebe, clinical Audiologist and President/CEO at HearingHealthMatters.org
Topic: Neosensory's Buzz and The Next Generation of Hearing Science
Dave is joined this week by David Eagleman, neuroscientist and NYT best-selling author, and two audiologists, Jacque Scholl and Kevin Liebe, to talk about David's company, Neosensory, and the wrist-worn wearable the company has designed for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, The Buzz.
The Buzz converts ambient sound into haptic vibrations using vibratory motors. The idea is that as the user continually wears The Buzz for extended periods of time, the user's brain will naturally begin to re-wire itself to better process and make sense of the subtleties in vibrations and what each vibration represents. This device stems from the research and work David has been conducting in his lab for years around sensory substitution, which he goes into thorough detail about throughout his newest NYT best-selling book, Livewired.
Jacque provides the perspective of both an audiologist and a mother to a 13 year old deaf daughter, Jade, who has been wearing The Buzz for months. According to Jacque, Jade has seen a dramatic increase in her speech improvement and ability to discriminate speech. In addition, The Buzz serves as a body-worn alerting device as it helps to notify Jade that there are sounds coming from behind her or in the distance. As Kevin mentions, The Buzz provides "tri-modal" communication as it complements speech and lip-reading as a third modality to provide even more context to the user.
Transcript: here
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Guests: Alan Davis, CPO at Nuheara; Andy Bellavia, Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp
Topic: Building a Successful Hearable at Nuheara
Alan joins Andy and Dave on the podcast this week to talk through the first 5 years at Nuheara as the Chief Product Officer and how his team of engineers was able to successfully build and iterate three separate versions of Nuheara's flagship hearing-enhancement hearable, IQ Buds. During this conversation, the three discuss some of the biggest challenges that plagued the hearable industry just a short while ago, how companies like Nuheara were able to solve those dilemmas, and some of the key lessons learned from these formative first years.
Nuheara is one of the biggest success stories in the hearables ecosystem, as the company not only survived the initial period, but are in as strong of a position as ever coming off the company's best earnings period yet. As the three discuss, there are many exciting innovations on the horizon that Nuheara should be well suited to incorporate into their future product offerings.
Episode Transcript
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Guest: Anna Rosen, Enterprise Solutions Engineer at Voiceflow
Topic: Voiceflow 2.0 & The Democratization of Conversational App Creation
Anna joins Dave this week to break down the big update to Voiceflow's conversational AI platform, V2. Voiceflow is a prototyping and design tool that allows teams of designers and developers to bring ideas to life and test their conversational AI creations in robust ways before deploying to various channels & modalities. These channels now include everything from Alexa/Google Assistant/Siri, to SMS, Slack, Twilio, Facebook Messenger, and more, while the modalities have expanded beyond smart-speakers, to in-car experiences and mobile applications.
Anna and Dave talk through some of the major developments that were revealed and how Voiceflow's all-in-one tool is helping to enable conversational AI teams collaborate and work together remotely, whether that be in real-time or asynchronously. As the two discuss, some of the major challenges that conversational AI teams face are rooted in communication breakdowns between designers and developers, which is why V2 had such a major emphasis on building feature sets that enable a more unified language between the two. In essence, V2 enhances speed, efficiency and communication.
Ultimately, what makes Voiceflow so special is that it caters to any level of builder, from experienced developers/designers to first-timers. It's truly helping to democratize conversational app creation and grow the ecosystem.
Episode Transcript
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Guests: Luke Pearce, Market Analyst (Consumer Audio) at Futuresource Consulting; Andy Bellavia, Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp
Topic: Breaking Down Hearables' Massive Growth in 2020 & What's on the Hearables' Horizon
Luke and Andy sit down with Dave this week to talk through Futuresource's 2020 Hearables Market Report, citing the key findings and then talking through some of the major trends indicated in the data.
Major trends discussed are:
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People buying a second or third hearable device for different use cases and situations
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The current status of voice tech integration into hearables
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The growing demand for "conversational enhancement" and amplification hearable features within the consumer market
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The trajectory of biometric monitoring features, biometric data visualization, and the preventative health use cases built off bio data
The three each share their perspectives on these topics and provide their opinions on what comes next now that the era of hearables is truly upon us.
Episode Transcript
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Guest: De Wet Swanepoel, Founder of HearX Group, Professor of Audiology at University of Pretoria, Editor in Chief at International Journal of Audiology
Topic: HearX, Having a Remote-Oriented Mindset, and Health Hearing for Everyone, Everywhere
De Wet joins Dave on the podcast this week to share the vision of his company, HearX Group, which is to provide healthy hearing to everyone, everywhere. HearX provides a suite of digital solutions, such as online hearing tests and self-fit hearing aids, that can be deployed by hearing professionals all around the world. In essence, HearX strives to utilize the power of the internet and today's digital tools to overcome and circumvent traditional barriers, so that as many people as possible can access the means to achieve healthier hearing.
As the pandemic continues to accelerate trends such as video chat and telemedicine adoption, HearX Group embodies a true, remote-first mentality and is enabling hearing professionals with the type of digital solutions that will help professionals' businesses transition into having more remote options for patients available. As Dave and De Wet discuss, there are many low-cost tools available to professionals today that can be actioned on almost immediately, to help gradually increase the amount of digital avenues of access to hearing hearing care that any type of hearing practice can implement and offer their patients.
Episode Transcript
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Guests: Dr. Ed Farrar, Co-Founder of Oto; Ben Thompson, AuD, Audiologist, Tinnitus Specialist, and Founder of Pure Tinnitus.
Topic: Tinnitus Therapy Solutions in 2021
In honor of Tinnitus Awareness Week, Dave is joined this week by two leading tinnitus experts to talk through all things tinnitus. The three discuss Ed's company, Oto, which is an app-based solution that provides smartphone users with various methods of Cognitive Behavioral Therapies (CBT) through the app. The app and its course modules were designed by leading tinnitus experts, including Future Ear guest, Anna Pugh, and built in an approachable, easy-to-access way, allowing for broad accessibility and usage for the millions of people suffering from tinnitus.
In addition, Ben shares his perspective as an Audiologist and tinnitus expert, and describes why solutions like Oto are so important to those suffering with tinnitus, as well as the profession of Audiology. Ben's YouTube channel, Pure Tinnitus, sheds a light on the various types of tinnitus treatment available, which includes group therapy or 1-to-1 therapy, as well as more general solutions for anyone broadly seeking treatment.
Transcript: here
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Guests: Dr. Natalie Phillips, Audiologist at Advanced Otolaryngology and Audiology. Founder/CEO of Connect4Excellence; Dr. Angela Alexander, Audiologist & Owner of Auditory Processing Network and APDSupport.com.
Topic: Breaking down the hot new social audio app, Clubhouse, and how hearing professionals might be able to leverage it.
Dave sits down this week with Dr. Natalie Phillips & Dr. Angela Alexander to discuss Clubhouse and how each of them have been utilizing the app the past few months. The three discuss the ins-and-outs of the app, describing how it works, as well as how Natalie & Angela each believe fellow audiologists and hearing professionals can use the app for personal and professional growth.
Full transcript here.
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Guest: Ron Jaworski - CEO & Founder of Trinity Audio
Topic: Making the Internet Audible
Dave kicks off Season 2 of the podcast with Ron Jaworski to discuss the innovation transpiring around text-to-speech, which Ron's company, Trinity Audio, is spearheading. The two chat about how the attention economy and the broad internet is gradually migrating toward our ears, and while audiobooks and podcasts have now been around for a little while, we're beginning to see spoken-word audio expand much more broadly, starting with many of the major publications' content libraries (i.e. WSJ, NYT, BBC, NPR, etc).
Ron and Dave talk through why today's synthetic voices have started to get increasingly realistic and the implications of shifting content consumption to our ears. This leads into a robust discussion around AirPods, hearables and hearing aids increasingly serving the role as, "content machine" as more types of content can be consumed in its entirety, or content that can be handed off from text to audio in a seamless fashion.
Full Episode Transcript: Here
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Guests: D'Anne Rudden, AuD; Kat Penno, AuD; Nick Reed, AuD; Geoff Cooling; Kim Cavitt, AuD; Cliff Olson, AuD
Topic: What are you looking forward to in 2021 as it relates to hearing health, audiology, and/or hearing technology?
For the last episode of 2020, Dave chats with six hearing professionals to understand what's on their mind heading into the new year.
This is part two of two. Part one (episode 54) featured seven individuals with backgrounds in consumer hearables, voice technology and hearing health advocacy.
Episode Transcript: here
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Guests: Andy Bellavia, Shari Eberts, Carl Thomas, Ryan Kraudel, Brielle Nickoloff, Scot & Susan Westwater
Topic: "What are you most looking forward to in 2021 as it relates to your industry, expertise and passion?"
Dave sits down with seven of his guests from the show this year to highlight what each person is most looking forward to in 2021 as it relates to their industry and expertise.
This is part one of two, focusing on folks with a background in hearables and voice technology. Part two will feature a group working in and around hearing healthcare.
Episode transcript: here
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Guest: Andrew Song, Co-Founder and President of Whisper.ai
Topic: Whisper.ai and a Novel Approach to Hearing Aids
This week, Dave is joined by Andrew Song, to discuss Whisper.ai and the new approach that the San Francisco-based company is taking with its hearing aid design. Andrew shares the three-pronged approach to their design - receiver-in-the-canal hearing aid devices, the "brain" processor (which is roughly the size of an AirPods case), and a mobile app - and explains how this system relies heavily on artificial intelligence to constantly improve the patient experience.
In addition to reimagining what a hearing aid system might look like, the company is distributing the Whisper exclusively through hearing professionals and actively looking for professionals to join their network.
For more information, visit Whisper.ai.
Episode Transcript: https://futurear.co/2020/12/10/053-andrew-song-whisper-ai-a-novel-approach-to-hearing-aids/
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Guests: Shawna Jackson, Clinical Audiologist at the Callier Center (Dallas); Jackie Phillips, Audiologist & Product Manager for the Otoscan at Natus Medical
Topic: The Value of 3D Ear Scanners
Jackie and Shawna join Dave this week to highlight an intriguing piece of technology that has recently been introduced to the audiology market: 3D ear scanners. Throughout this conversation, Shawna walks through her experience of using this type of technology at the Callier Center on a daily basis, and speaks to all the various benefits derived from the 3D scanner. In addition, Jackie, as the product manager for one of these devices, helps to further illustrate some unique ways that 3D scanners can be utilized by the professional.
Ultimately, 3D ear scanners provide a highly effective way for professionals to differentiate their service offering, generate genuine excitement, facilitate patient education, and reinforce their professional value in the eyes of the patient.
Episode Transcript: https://futurear.co/2020/12/03/052-shawna-jackson-aud-jackie-phillips-aud-the-value-of-3d-ear-scanners/
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Guest: Richard Einhorn, Owner - Einhorn Consulting
Topic: Breaking Down the Significance of the Jacoti + Qualcomm Partnership and the Consumerization of Hearing Health Functionality
Richard joins Dave on this podcast this week to share his perspective of the Jacoti and Qualcomm partnership, as he has been a longtime consultant for Jacoti. With Qualcomm partnering to integrate Jacoti's hearing augmentation technology inside Qualcomm's chips, we're due to see a number of hearable manufacturers introduce products that utilize this integration to provide hearing augmentation functionality.
The two discuss why this partnership is such a big deal for combatting hearing loss at scale, what it means to bake Jacoti's technology into Qualcomm's hearable chips, and how this impacts the entire spectrum of hearing augmentation devices.
Episode Transcript: https://futurear.co/2020/11/19/051-richard-einhorn-jacoti-qualcomm-the-consumerization-of-hearing-health/
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Guest: Bret Kinsella, Founder and CEO of Voicebot.ai
Topic: The State of Voice Technology and What Comes Next
Bret joins Dave for the 50th episode of the podcast to break down the current state of voice technology, with a look toward what's on the horizon with conversational voice assistants.
The two talk through the following topics:
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The current phase of voice assistants: habituation & specialization - all the various ways that people are gradually building the habit of using voice assistants, along with the specialized voice assistants that are being built for specific domains (i.e. banking, healthcare, agriculture)
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How different modalities (speakers, smart displays, smart TV's, hearables) are adding breadth in use cases and perpetuating the habituation of voice assistants
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How the Alexa, Google and Siri ecosystems are taking shape and what to expect in the near future for each of these, as well as some of the more niche players
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The importance of media to voice assistants and why Bret & Dave agree that it will likely be one of the most impactful use cases for conversational AI
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Marsbot and the emergence of hearables-specific applications for voice assistants
Episode Transcription: https://futurear.co/2020/11/12/050-bret-kinsella-the-state-of-voice-tech-what-comes-next/
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Guests: Nick Hunn, CTO of WiFore Consulting and Chairman of The Bluetooth SIG Hearing Aid Working Group; Carl Thomas, Founder of Audiowings
Topic: The Past, Present and Future of Hearables
In a very special episode of the podcast, Nick Hunn, wireless technology analyst and Bluetooth expert, joins Dave and Carl to share his insight around what's transpired in the hearable market since it emerged roughly five years ago, how it has taken shape up to now, and where Nick believes the market is headed across the next five years.
As the analyst who coined the term, "hearable," Nick offers one of the most knowledgeable and deeply researched perspectives around each facet of this product category.
Topics covered:
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Why AirPods were so successful and the secondary effects of its success
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Potential applications of Bluetooth LE Audio
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The role of biometrics in hearables' trajectory
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How voice assistants will be used in tandem with hearables and the potential ramifications
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The importance of startups to this space
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The innovation transpiring inside the devices
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Guests: Kat Penno - Audiologist & Founder of the Hearing Collective; Andy Bellavia, Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp
Topic: Lifestyle Enhancement Devices
Kat and Andy join Dave this week to walk through some of the most interesting hearables on the market, highlighting various features and aspects of each device that stand out.
In addition, the three talk through some of the recent news pertaining to the world of hearables and the use cases that they support, including Spotify's recent update that allows podcasts to now include full music tracks into podcasts, creating entirely new formats of audio content.
In addition, Foursquare has rolled out its new Marsbot Audio AR platform that has a number of very intriguing use cases and might be shedding a light on how the usage of hearables will evolve across the next few years.
The more you can do with hearing aids & hearables, the more incentive to wear them.
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Guests: Dr. Kim Cavitt, Owner of Audiology Resources; Karl Strom, Editor in Chief at the Hearing Review
Topic: Exploring Where the Big Opportunities Lie for Hearing Professionals
Kim and Karl join Dave to discuss a wide variety of hearing healthcare-related topics and explore how the industry is broadly changing and what types of opportunities all of this change is generating.
Topics during this episode include:
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Accessibility and meeting patients where they want to be met by using new types of tools and services
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How hearing professionals might think about servicing the mild end of the market and why this side of the market is becoming increasingly ripe with opportunity
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Emphasizing services rooted in evaluation and charging for those services properly
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What new elements to audiology and hearing health excite these two industry veterans most
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Where these two would focus their efforts if they were just starting out in the industry
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Guests: Irina Fine & Ian Freed - cofounders of Bamboo Learning
Topic: Building an EdTech Business for Alexa and Google Assistant
Irina and Ian join Dave on the podcast this week to share what it's been like building a business built specifically for Alexa & Google Assistant-enabled devices. Their company, Bamboo Learning, is designed to offer children an immersive learning experience, with a suite of skills and actions that provide educational problems to solve for Math, Literature, English, History and Music.
The two fill Dave in on recent updates to the company's offering, including a new SaaS "freemium" offering, as well as sharing the lessons they've learned from building on these new platforms. This conversation is a barometer for the health of the voice tech ecosystem, and lends itself to the idea that there are viable businesses that can be built within these emerging ecosystems.
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Guest: Ryan Kraudel, VP Marketing at Valencell
Topic: Breaking Down the New Apple Watch Series 6 Blood Oxygenation Sensor
Ryan and Dave sit down to discuss the new flagship feature of the Apple Watch Series 6: the blood oxygenation sensor.
As an expert in biometric sensors stemming from his background at Valencell, Ryan shares how exactly this type of sensor works, why it uses red and infared light, what types of use cases can be built off this metric, and how this new variable factors into Apple's quest to build a true "intelligent guardian of health."
In addition, the two talk about Apple Fitness +, why it's not a threat to Peloton (but rather a boon), and how the Apple Watch's data is being overlaid in real-time to video as a precursor to AR.
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Guest: Brian Roemmele, Payments Expert, Student of History, Polymath who coined the term "VoiceFirst"
Topic: The Path to Contextual Voice Assistants
Brian joins Dave for a marathon of an episode to discuss the trajectory of voice assistants and how we move into an era of contextually-aware voice assistants. The two cover a lot of ground with this far-reaching discussion, as Brian shares his insight into where he believes computing is headed across the next decade, as it becomes more ambient and conversational.
In addition, the two talk through Amazon's Project Kuiper and Amazon Sidewalk mesh network, and what Amazon is quietly working toward with its Echo Network.
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Guests: Dr. Cliff Olson, Audiologist and Owner of Applied Hearing Solutions; Andy Bellavia, Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp
Topic: Breaking Down this Seminal Moment in Hearing Aid Innovation
Cliff and Andy join Dave this week to discuss the flurry of new hearing aids that have hit the market, and speak to the broad level of tech innovation that these devices represent. The three chat about how the primary use case (amplification) has been massively improved in the recent years, as well as how Bluetooth connectivity is reshaping the way today's hearing aids can be used.
Finally, the three walk through some of the emerging use cases that hearing aids are enabling, and why these secondary use cases not only have the potential to improve the value proposition of the devices, but also further enable the professionals to enhance their own value proposition.
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Guest: Dr. Nick Reed, Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins School of Health.
Topic: The Significance of Johns Hopkins' ACHIEVE Trial
Nick joins Dave on the podcast to talk through one of the recent findings from the Lancet Commission on Dementia, which states that one of the strongest preventative actions to stunt the onset and rate of dementia is to encourage use of hearing aids for hearing loss.
As the two discuss, while this call to action seems very straightforward, the challenge is that the general medical community needs clinical validation in order to buy into the idea of mass screening for hearing loss (i.e. at one's physician checkup). That's what the ACHIEVE trial is set out to answer - whether or not there's a definitive link between hearing aids providing a some sort of positive effect to the rate of cognitive decline and dementia.
Nick outlines why this randomized control trial has the potential to serve as one of the most significant driving forces to impacting the broad perception surrounding the comorbidities linked to hearing loss and the preventative measures that can be taken to mitigate said comorbidities.
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Guests: Brett Bivens, Venture Investor at Tech Nexus; Ryan Kraudel, VP Marketing at Valencell
Topic: The Apple Health Blueprint
Brett and Ryan join Dave to break down Apple's healthcare ambitions, honing in on what the company is building toward with its Apple Health app.
Throughout the discussion, the three chat about:
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Apple Health as a broad data repository housing its own data & third party device data
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The types of data that can be captured today and will be captured in the next few years
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New entrants into the health tech space (i.e. Peloton & Lululemon via its Mirror acquisition)
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Why Apple's messaging around privacy might ultimately be tied to its healthcare plans.
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Guests: Jason Mayer, VP Commercial Sales at Phonak; Meagan Lewis, Director of Audiology at Wake Forest Baptist Health
Topic: Leveraging Remote Audiology Services to Adapt & Thrive
Meagan and Jason join Dave this week to chat about the implementation and usage of remote telehealth services in the audiology setting.
Meagan shares her own experience of incorporating remote services into her clinic, and provides her perspective around how she believes remote services can be effectively utilized today, and post-pandemic as well.
As a longtime veteran at Phonak, Jason offers a peak behind the curtain at how the hearing aid manufacturers are viewing this time, and what companies like Phonak are doing to help enable practitioners to operate remotely.
The conversation covers a wide array of topics, including the types of services that can be used by professionals today, how to think about billing for these services, and the evolution of the practicing professionals' business model as new services become more available and in-demand.
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Guest: Mark Tucker - Alexa Champion & Senior Architect, Voice Technology at Soar.com
Topic: Top 5 Takeaways from Alexa Live 2020
Mark joins Dave this week to share the five most exciting developments coming from this year's Alexa Live, which is a virtual event sharing updates about Alexa held for developers, device makers and business leaders within the Alexa ecosystem. Amazon announced a total of 31 upcoming new features for its voice assistant, which Mark tracked meticulously on Twitter as he live-tweeted the event.
Mark is an Alexa Champion, meaning he was hand-picked by Amazon as one of the top-tier developers building skills and experiences for Alexa. During the course of this conversation, Mark and Dave walk through each of the five most important takeaways from this year's event.
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Guest: Bruce Rasa - CEO & CoFounder of AgVoice
Topic: AgVoice & Voice Technology for Agriculture and Farming
Bruce joins Dave this week to share the story of AgVoice, a voice tech start up based in Atlanta that's aiming to arm our farmers with custom-built voice technology to assist in a range of different agriculture-based jobs. AgVoice works closely with a wide variety of farmers, agriculture workers, and plant scientists to better understand their lexicons and terminology, which they use to build custom natural language processing (NLP) systems around. The idea is that AgVoice's voice-enabled system can then allow workers to do things such as data entry in real-time, completely hands-free (by using a hearable), which is a massive time saver.
Throughout the conversation, the two discuss how innovations in cellular connectivity (ushered in by SpaceX's Starlink) are allowing for 5G speeds virtually anywhere on the planet, as well as breakthroughs in NLP are finally enabling this type of technology for a vast set of workers.
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Guests: Andy Bellavia, Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp; Carl Thomas, Founder of Audiowings & Hearables Expert
Topic: "Hearables Aren't the Thing... They're What Give You Access to THE Thing"
This episode stems from a 2019 twitter thread from Carl, in which he posited that hearables are a portal to something much larger (riffing off an iconic scene from the AMC TV show, Halt & Catch Fire.)
Carl, Andy & Dave go around the horn to share what they think hearables will ultimately give rise to - similar to how computers eventually gave way to the internet.
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Guests: Giles Tongue, CEO of ChatableApps; Geoff Cooling, hearing professional and co-founder of Hearing Aid Know
Topic: ChatableApps
Giles joins Dave and Geoff for this episode to walk them through everything ChatableApps - from how it works and can empower folks with hearing loss, to the science that goes into the app and ultimately how it fits into the audiologists' suite of services.
https://chatableapps.com/
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Guests: Kat Penno - Audiologist & Founder of the Hearing Collective; Andy Bellavia, Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp
Topic: AirPods' Role in Tackling Hearing Loss
Dave is joined by Kat and Andy to discuss the new accessibility features coming to AirPods Pro with the new iOS14 update. Included in the features, is the ability to amplify and adjust sounds and frequencies for digital audio (music, podcasts, phone calls, etc), and also amplify ambient sounds while in transparency mode (people's voices). The three discuss the importance and relevance of these updates to the hearing loss population and the hearing health professional.
They share their views on how this will ultimately impact and help shape the broader hearables market, specifically the devices and features tailored for those with hearing loss.
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Guests: Gyl Kasewurm (Professional Hearing Centers - MI), Meagan Lewis (Wake Forest Baptist Health -NC), Ronnie Boling (Brentwood Hearing Center - TN), Sheryl Figliano (Centers for Hearing Care - OH), Judy Huch (Oro Valley Audiology - AZ), and Jason Aird (Iowa Audiology & Hearing Centers - IA)
Topic: Life for Private Practice Owners and Audiologists from March-June 2020
Dave interviews six audiologists and business owners across the hearing care industry to discuss what life has been like in each of their business settings during the pandemic.
The goal of this conversation is to understand how their businesses have been impacted, what the shutdown has been like in different parts of the country, how they have adapted to these challenges, and ultimately what their practices look like as businesses begin to reopen from lockdown.
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Guests: Shari Eberts - Hearing Health Advocate, HLAA Board Member, & Founder of LivingWithHearingLoss.com; Matt Hay - Hearing Health Advocate & Director of Audiology Sales at Redux
Topic: Life with Hearing Loss during a Pandemic
Shari and Matt join Dave to walk through their individual journeys from when they first discovered they had hearing loss to becoming advocates and champions for hearing health.
Each share their perspectives on the challenges folks with hearing loss face as masks and zoom calls become normalized, and ways that we as a society can better accommodate for our large population of people with hearing loss.
In addition, the three chat about technology and ways that it has proved beneficial for the hearing loss community.
Show Notes
Matt's NPR/KQED Story: https://www.kqed.org/news/11383461/soundtrack-of-silence
Shari's Petition to Provide Free Captions for People with Hearing Loss on Video Conferencing Platforms: https://www.change.org/p/zoom-provide-free-captions-for-people-with-hearing-loss-on-video-conferencing-platforms?recruiter=359597240&recruited_by_id=be034850-4047-11e5-a8c6-c9230ac6254b&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=petition_dashboard
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Guests: Andy Bellavia (Knowles Corp), Chris Economos (PhysIQ), Ryan Kraudel (Valencell)
Topic: Building Early Detection Systems with our Wearable Devices to Combat Public Health Crises
Dave hosts a panel comprising of Andy, Chris and Ryan to explore the idea of how wearable & biosensor technology can be used to help combat public health crises by serving as early detection systems for irregularities found in individual health data sets. The four talk through today's sensor capabilities, clinical trials that have been conducted to highlight the validity, and how machine learning & deep learning are allowing for more sophisticated measurements & assessments of a wide variety of metrics.
Our wearables are quickly progressing to the point where they can serve as true guardians of health.
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Guest: Kyle Acker, SVP at RiseENT
Topic: The Appreciating Value of Today's Hearings Aids
Kyle joins Dave to share his professional journey that led him to RiseENT after spending ten years at Starkey Hearing Technologies. From there, the two discuss how the industry can adapt to the various disruptive forces that it's facing. Finally, the two dive into today's hearing aid technology, and speak to the ways in which the hearing aid value proposition is evolving and how providers can best leverage all this new found value.
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Guests: Jeff Adams, CEO & Founder of Cobalt Speech and Language
Topic: Building Alexa and What Comes Next for Conversational AI
Jeff Adams joins Dave for this episode of the podcast, walking Dave through the major hurdles that Jeff's team at Amazon had to solve when they were tasked with bringing Alexa to life. Jeff founded the Alexa Speech Group and led a team of speech & language scientists from 2011 - 2014 at Amazon building the automatic speech recognition (ASR) system and natural-language understanding (NLU) engine that Alexa runs on.
Jeff provides insight into how his team solved wake word detection, ASR, NLU, and text-to-speech synthesis, and then shares what's on the horizon for conversational AI more broadly.
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Guests: Imrich Valach, Co-founder & CEO of Sentien
Topic: Sentien Audio: All Day Bone-Conduction Hearable
Dave sits down with Imrich Valach to discuss the novel and creative approach his team is taking to the whole premise of a hearable, with its all-day, bone-conduction audio device. During this interview, Imrich and Dave chat about the inspiration behind starting the company, why he ultimately settled on bone conduction for the form factor, and how the device can serve as a conduit to the audio web and voice user interface.
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Guests: Nikolaj Hviid, CEO of Bragi, and Andy Bellavia, Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp
Topic: BragiOS: The Intelligent Hub Connecting a World Full of Sensors
Andy and Dave sit down with Nikolaj Hviid, the CEO of Bragi, to learn the full story of Bragi - how it started, the "proof of concept" hardware phase, and the current phase with BragiOS. Last year, Bragi sold off its hardware business to get back to its roots as a software-based company and shifted the whole company's focus on BragiOS.
Throughout the conversation, Nikolaj shares the vision of BragiOS and compares it to a sort of "hive-mind" of sensors that are operating as a collective group to gather insights. As Nikolaj mentions, sensors are increasingly becoming smaller and cheaper, allowing for broader proliferation. What BragiOS intends to do is connect and unify those sensors together within BragiOS so that all the various sensors can communicate amongst each other, to identify specific insights based on the aggregate of what's being sensed.
This was one of the most insightful and futuristic episodes yet. Enjoy!
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Guests: D'Anne Rudden, Owner of Longmont Hearing & Tinnitus, and Brian Urban, President and Co-Founder of CounselEAR
Topic: TeleHealth in the Audiology Setting
Audiologists D'Anne Rudden and Brian Urban join Dave to talk about how TeleHealth is being implemented and adopted within the audiology setting. As a private practice owner, D'Anne shares her own experience of adopting TeleHealth in her practice, while Brian shares how CounselEAR's TeleHealth feature has been adopted by various hearing care professionals and practices around the country. The conversation delves into the perceptions and attitudes toward TeleHealth before the pandemic, how it's viewed today, and then how they each see TeleHealth's role in the audiology setting as we move beyond the pandemic and into the future.
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Guest: Ian Freed, CEO of Bamboo Learning
Topic: 5 Reasons Why Bamboo Learning Fascinates Me
Hello and welcome back to Future Ear. The next episode of podcast features Ian Freed, CEO of Bamboo Learning.
Throughout this conversation, Dave highlights five reasons why he believes Bamboo Learning is one of the "must watch" companies within the voice industry. Through a combination of deep domain knowledge (Ian led the Alexa team at Amazon when Alexa debuted) and subject matter expertise (co-founder Irina Fine's background in education), the two have fused their knowledge together to create an educational offering built specifically for Alexa devices.
Ian believes Alexa is a computing platform in its own right, and therefore thinks that there's far more potential with the types of experiences that can built for Alexa speakers and multi-modal devices, which is what he and Irina are aiming to prove with Bamboo.
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Guest: Keri Roberts, Brand and Content Strategist and Host of the Inside VOICE podcast
Topic: Takeaways from 100+ Voice Technology Podcast Interviews
Keri joins Dave to discuss some of her biggest takeaways from the first 100 episodes of the podcast she hosts, Inside VOICE. The two go rapid-fire through a number of her guests, highlighting the main theme of the episode and what resonated most with Keri from the discussion. Keri shares her unique perspective from covering so many different facets of the voice technology industry making for a fantastic discussion.
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Guest: Paul Michaelenko, CEO & Founder of the Listen App
Topic: The Listen App & Social Podcasting
Paul sits down with Dave to share the vision of the Listen App, a new type of podcast player with an emphasis on social sharing. As the two discuss, podcasting is in need for a social layer that's built natively for the audio medium. Just as we saw Facebook's first attempt at a mobile app fail due to not accommodating for the mobile user interface and size of the device, podcasts exist in an audio-based environment, but are primarily accessed and shared through text-based formats. The Listen App team is effectively taking on the challenge of bringing other elements of the podcasting experience (i.e. listener engagement) to the native environment of the podcast: audio.
Paul shares some of the different ways that the Listen App is reimagining the podcast experience with features such as voice comments and voice recommendations. Look for the Listen App to hit the app stores soon.
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Guest: Kevin Liebe, Audiologists and President/CEO of Hearing Health & Technology Matters
Topic: Innovations in Hearing Care and (Hearing Aid) Data is the New Oil
Kevin Liebe joins Dave to discuss the new column he's launched at HHTM around innovations occurring in the hearing healthcare industry. The two discuss the three interviews that Kevin has conducted so far, going one-by-one to talk through some of the key takeaways from each guest. From there, the two discuss the possible benefits that may stem from the mass amount of data that is now being collected due to the widespread proliferation of connected hearing aids.
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Guest: Priti Moudgill, CEO & Founder of Peripherii
Topic: Fashionable Hearables
Priti sits down with Dave to share the story behind what led her to start her hearables startup, Peripherii. The two discuss why hearables designed as earrings that are tailored for women is both intriguing and feasible, the rise of "situational" hearables, and the type of universal features that will likely be available for the broad hearable economy over time.
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Guest: Liz Fuemmeler, Audiologist and Vestibular Specialist at Hearing and Balance KC
Topic: Life as a Recent Audiology Graduate
Liz joins Dave to share her journey of becoming an Audiologist and landing her first job as an AuD as a Vestibular Specialist at Hearing and Balance KC. During their conversation, Liz shares what life has been like transitioning from grad school into the working world, how she found a job in private practice, what drew her toward becoming a Vestibular specialist, some of her major takeaways from her first year as an AuD, and her perspective of the future of Audiology.
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Guest: Andreas Stegmann, Product Manager at Chrono24 and Author of the post, "Spotify at the Crossroads"
Topic: Spotify at the Crossroads
Andy joins Dave to walk through his fantastic Medium post, "Spotify at the Crossroads," where he lays out some of the pitfalls Spotify is facing and how the company might best navigate those challenges. One of the keys, Andy believes, will be for the company to find a way to grow beyond music and into more ambient forms of media. Content Curation, discoverability, social sharing and open-sourcing are just a few of the topics discussed in this wide-spanning episode.
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Guest: Mark Truong, Audiology Student and Host of the Hear Me Out Podcast
Topic: Hearing Aid Genius Bars
Mark joins Dave to share some of his key learnings from the first year of starting his podcast. Mark is a first year student of audiology in Melbourne, Australia, and has taken the initiative to start his own podcast, where he interviews all types of hearing care leaders and experts about a wide variety of audiology-specific topics.
Much of the conversation centers around how hearing care providers are well positioned to thrive in the impending OTC era by differentiating the patient experience they provide through exceptional service. Mark says that one of the biggest takeaways he's had from his guests is that the patient/customer is becoming much more savvy and well-informed, and therefore, providers need to go above and beyond during the patient experience as great experiences can lead to positive online & offline feedback (positive reviews, great word of mouth marketing). On the flip side, a poor experience can lead to brand damage.
There's a lot to learn from companies like Apple, who have created an exceptional experience of purchasing Apple products through its stores and the genius bar. Mark and Dave believe that practices could implement something that resembles a hearing aid and hearable genius bar, where the provider is the expert on all of the various technology and plays the role of match-maker, matching the patient to the best piece of technology that suits their needs. Therefore, it's not just being an expert on the science and fitting of the device, but also the technology and the various things that these new devices are capable of.
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Guest: Andy Bellavia (Business Development at Knowles Corp) & Bradley Metrock (CEO of Score Publishing and host of Project Voice)
Topic: The Emergence of Voice Panel from Project Voice
This episode of the podcast is a recording of the, "Emergence of Hearables" panel from Project Voice. Dave and Andy comprise the panel, which was moderated by Bradley. The three discuss a wide range of hearables + voice technology topics, including the recently announced Bluetooth protocol, Bluetooth LE Audio, and the types of applications that this protocol can facilitate.
In addition, they discuss the ways in which voice assistants can be designed to work for hearables and some of the types of hearables-specific voice applications we may see. At the end, the conversation shifts to biometric monitoring, the challenges faced with collecting this type of data, and also the potential for voice assistants to serve as an intelligent aggregator and agent of the data, notifying the user of what's being assessed from the data.
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Guest: Bob Stolzberg, CEO & Founder of VoiceXP
Topic: Wise Words from a Voice Pioneer
Bob Stolzberg joins Dave to share some of the key things he's learned across the first three years that Bob has been building voice experiences. Bob's company, VoiceXP, provides a do-it-yourself platform that allows anyone to easily create voice experiences for Alexa or Google Assistant on their own - as Bob refers to it, it's the "Wix/Squarespace of Voice."
One of the key learnings that Bob shares is that it's best to keep your experience simple at the onset and not try to, "boil the ocean." Launching a voice experience is only half the battle, as the other half is making people aware of the experience via legacy marketing efforts. If you build it, they won't necessarily come.
The two move onto what the future holds as we enter into this new decade and Bob believes that one of the biggest breakthroughs will be the vast increases in API's that voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant can tap into. This will reduce the friction for users to access voice skills, which means it will be much more compelling for businesses of all types to start creating voice experiences. In addition, Bob sees "in-situation" invocations becoming a compelling hook to get businesses to buy into building voice experiences.
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Guest: Carl Thomas, Founder of Audiowings & Longtime Hearables Enthusiast
Topic: Hearables-as-a-Platform
Carl joins Dave to discuss a wide range of hearables-specific topics. The two begin with some of the key learnings that Carl has had from his time knowing Nick Hunn, the wireless analyst who coined the term, "hearables." Chief among those learnings was the idea of hearables-as-a-platform, and the type of ongoing experience that these products can provide, beyond the hardware. For example, might we one day see hearing aids unbundled, where one buys the widget and subscribes to the audiometric configuration, aka their "prescription" on a monthly or annual basis?
Some of the other topics that the two discuss are why the ear makes so much sense to collect biometric data and what can be done with that type of data. As Carl states, the ear is a, "physiological playground," given the highly unique combination of traits that make it ideal for data collection. Finally, the two discuss a fantastic Twitter thread that Carl posted last year juxtaposing hearables with a famous line from the TV show, Halt & Catch Fire. "Hearables aren't the thing; Hearables are the thing that gives you access to THE thing."
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Guest: Brielle Nickoloff, Product Marketing Lead, Witlingo
Topic: Toolsets for Voice Creators
Brielle joins Dave to talk about Witlingo and the toolsets that they're building off to arm voice creators and help them make content production and distribution easier. For example, Witlingo's platform allows for non-technical people, such as Dave, to quickly publish and disseminate his flash briefing to Alexa and Google Assistant in a matter of minutes. The two talk about how each phase of computing tends to proliferate at an increasing rate, as the toolsets mature, allowing for better production, resulting in an abundance of higher quality content.
As Brielle describes to Dave, one interesting area that Witlingo is focusing on is with community messaging - think assisted living facilities or college campuses. Through the various tools Witlingo provides, community managers can broadcast messages and updates on a one-to-many basis or even a one-to-one basis to each of the community members. This type of use case is compelling because it habituates the user to using their voice assistant-enabled devices more regularly, bringing more voice users into the fold.
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Guest: Brett Bivens, Venture Capitalist at TechNexus
Topic: Spotify's Pursuit of the Growing "Audio Day" Opportunity
Dave and Brett explore Spotify's pursuit to be more than just a music streaming company, with podcasting being the first step toward all kinds of new, more profitable ambient media services. The conversation largely revolves around Spotify CEO Daniel Ek's question of whether our eyes should really be worth 10X more than our ears. The two discuss why Spotify is unique relative to other consumer SaaS companies, some of the potential opportunities the company has to move into new verticals, and why an acquisition of The Ringer would probably make a lot of sense (depending on the sale figure). Finally, the two talk about ByteDance and TikTok and the intersection of social media and audio.
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Guest: Dave Copithorne - Director of Content at Hearing Tracker
Topic: Recapping Starkey's 2020 Expo
Dave C walks Dave K through the four day Starkey Expo held in Las Vegas this past week, highlighting some of the key themes, product developments and general takeaways from the expo held by the American hearing aid manufacturer.
The two begin by discussing Starkey's flagship hearing aid, LivioAI, and how Starkey is doubling down on the efforts to transform the hearing aid into a preventative health tool through new product announcements and the first ever hire of a Chief Health Officer. In addition, Starkey CTO Achin Bhowmik introduced LivioAI Edge, a new iteration of the Livio that incorporates a level of edge-computing, allowing for improvements in things like speech-in-noise by leveraging the on-device processing. According to Dave C, the commonality across all announcements was that Starkey is pushing the boundaries on what high-end wearables can do, particularly with the ways that it can capture data and generate actionable insights from said data, while simultaneously making hardware-specific improvements to accommodate these additional features without sacrificing the integrity of the quality of the device. In essence, Starkey is moving the ball forward with the re-imagining of the traditional hearing aid.
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Guest: Anna Pugh - Longtime Audiologist, BSHAA Council Member, and Owner of Hearing Therapy Online
Topic: The Audiology Long Game
Anna and Dave chat about the, "Audiology Long Game," and how the hearing care professional can flourish in these changing times. The conversation spans a whole host of topics, including the state of the hearing care landscape in the UK, why hearing aid adoption rates are similar in the UK as the US (even though hearing aids are free in the UK through the NHS), and how the mass proliferation of consumer hearables (i.e. AirPods) is adding a new dynamic to the stigmatization of hearing aids.
The bulk of the conversation centers around the idea of hearing care providers needing to re-position their business models to become more service-based. The reason being is that as the market of options for folks to treat their hearing loss grows to include more online, automated and big box options, it creates more complexity and therefore, more demand for expertise. Hearing care professionals, with their years of education and expertise, own an asset that's defensible and tough to replicate, which is their knowledge and expertise. As Anna and Dave discuss, the providers that thrive in the, "Audiology Long Game" will be those who leverage their expertise most effectively to differentiate against traditional and new competitors via exceptional expertise and service.
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Guest: Nick White, EVP of Patient Care Solutions at Orbita
Topic: OrbitaASSIST & Voice Applications for Healthcare
Dave and Nick talk about some of the ways that Orbita is pioneering and implementing voice technology into the healthcare setting. As a leader in the Voice + healthcare space, Orbita is at the forefront of what's becoming possible as voice is transfused into a wide variety of medical settings.
One area that Orbita is particularly interested in is at the patient's bedside in the hospital. OrbitaASSIST transforms the traditional call-button found in many hospitals, to provide a much more contextually-rich type of patient-to-nurse communication system.
The way that OrbitaASSIST works is that it allows for the patient to issue a request for a nurse to come see the patient, and can input via the assistant what exactly they need. Each request goes into a portal that the nurses attending to the patients tied to the portal, can get a breakdown of who needs want and better triage urgent requests. As Nick mentions to Dave, the current time it takes for a traditional call-button request to be attended to can range from a few minutes to over a half-hour. Teams that have begun to implement OrbitaAssist have reduced their time for urgent requests to 14 seconds. There are massive efficiency improvements being facilitated by this type of technology.
This conversation provides a glimpse into the innovative ways that voice technology is beginning to support medical professionals, patients and caregivers in many new ways.
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Guest: Ryan Kraudel, VP Marketing - Valencell
Topic: Biometric Sensors + Hearables
Dave brings Ryan Kraudel on to talk about the type of biometric sensors that Valencell manufacturers and the various devices that these sensors are being embedded into. Valencell makes optical-based, PPG (photoplethysmogram) sensors that are capable of capturing and measuring a wide-range of biometric health data points. If you've ever seen the green blinking light on the underside of an Apple Watch, that's the PPG sensor capturing one's heart rate data.
As the two discuss during the episode, there's been a breakthrough recently with these type of sensors, both in the size of the sensors (allowing for them to be embedded on devices as small as a receiver-in-the-canal hearing aid) and the sophistication of the machine learning algorithms that are used to asses the data. Given the widespread of adoption of consumer wearables and the increasing amount of sensors that are being outfit on these devices, the two talk about how this will give rise to personalized, individual longitudinal health data sets.
The health baselines that can be established with consumer wearables and the ability for machine learning algorithms to detect deviations from the baselines, will usher in a much more proactive phase of healthcare. Rather than reacting to the symptoms of being sick, this new combination of technology will allow for Apple Watch, AirPods and other wearable users to be alerted to potential risks being discovered within their data. This is the era of preventative health and as Ryan mentions, we're only beginning to scratch the surface with the types of metrics that we can glean from the broad swath of health data being captured by Valencell's PPG sensors.
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Guest: Tim McElreath, Director of Technology - Mobile & Emerging Technologies at Discovery
Topic: Food Network Kitchen
Dave and Tim discuss the recently launched application from Discovery, Food Network Kitchen. This new, interactive application is available on mobile devices, and specifically designed with Amazon's Fire TV and Echo Show smart displays in mind. The service includes a library of thousands of recipes, step-by-step on demand videos for many of the recipes, and 4-6 live-cooking classes with Food Network chefs. When using the application through a smart display, users can pause/rewind videos with their voice as well as ask questions pertinent to what's being cooked (how many pounds of chicken are needed?).
Throughout the conversation, Tim makes the case for why Food Network Kitchen might ultimately serve as a blueprint for how content-based companies can integrate their content through these new, voice-based modalities. It's easy to see how Discovery may even replicate this service for other segments of content it owns, such as HGTV with educational and entertaining videos of its own.
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Guests: Scot & Susan Westwater
Topic: Pragmatic Voice Strategies
Dave chats with Scot and Susan Westwater about their two-person digital consultancy, Pragmatic Digital, and their new book, Voice Strategy: Creating Useful & Usable Voice Experiences.
Pragmatic Digital was created to help meet the growing demand that companies of all sizes need help getting started with a voice strategy. Scot and Susan take a pragmatic approach with voice, based on their long tenures in agencies and digital marketing firms, applying many of their key learnings from past paradigms to how businesses should think about voice. In the book, the two lay out a framework for companies to use to begin developing their voice strategies. This blueprint helps companies to see that rather than trying to hit a homerun, it's better to just find small things that can be implemented around voice, and start with a base hit.
Voice Strategy: Creating Useful & Usable Voice Experiences can be purchased here or on Amazon.
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Guest: Hunter McKinley, CMO - YAC Chat
Topic: Apps for an AirPods-Oriented World
Dave and Hunter discuss YAC (Yelling Across Cubicles) and the apps they're building around two major trends: remote work and the emergence of AirPods (and other hearables). One of the apps that the YAC team has built is called BRB, which allows for 30 second voice messages to be relayed back and forth. BRB is designed with remote teams in mind, making it a hybrid of a walkie talkie and Slack.
The two discuss how messaging is evolving, citing emerging international markets and younger cohorts and the ways that these individuals prefer to message. This speaks to a broader trend, which is that many of the applications and use cases that we rely on our smartphones today are being unbundled.
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Guest: Geoff Cooling, Hearing Aid Know
Topic: A Tsunami of Change Heading for Hearing Healthcare
Dave and Geoff talk about why we're poised to see more change in the hearing aid industry across the next 5 years compared to the past 50 years. The reason? A confluence of trends. The devices are transforming into hearables - ear-worn computers - which are giving rise to new use cases, allowing for the devices to perform far more tasks. In addition, new legislation like the over-the-counter hearing aid act opens the door for lower-cost options and new suppliers to enter the market.
The two talk about how hearing care professionals can position themselves now to adapt to the impending wave of change and embrace the disruption.
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Guest: Bradley Metrock, CEO Score Publishing & VoiceFirst Events
Topic: Project Voice
Dave and Bradley talk about the genesis of Project Voice (formerly named the Alexa conference), how the conference has evolved, the growing voice enthusiast community that Bradley has helped to cultivate and what to expect at this year's Project Voice.
Along with the conference, Bradley also shares his take on whether we're in the midst of a, "trough of disillusionment," with voice technology.
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Guest: Andy Bellavia
Topic: VoiceFirst Hearables Use Cases
After discussing the evolving hearables landscape in part one, Andy and Dave now move into some of the new use cases that voice-assistant enabled hearables will begin to offer. One area that seems ripe for some innovation is around audio content consumption and the ways in which we access said content. Perhaps this combination will offer new ways to curate and discover audio content specific to the user's interests.
GPS-based applications also represent a new avenue with lots of possibilities, which the two speak about in depth. The idea of having conversations with your voice assistant about loads of information that's already stored in the app ecosystem.
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Guest: Andy Bellavia
Topic: Hearables Ubiquity
Andy and Dave provide a rundown of the recent movement that's occurred in the hearables space with the slew of new products being entering the market or due to enter the market soon. We'll soon have AirPods Pro, Beats Powerbeats Pro, Echo Buds, Galaxy Buds, Pixel Buds 2.0 and Surface Buds (maybe) all available on the market. The era of hearables has officially arrived, and Andy and Dave reflect back on this journey to 2020 and the challenges that were overcome, and new hearables-specific features that are beginning to go mainstream.
This convo sets the stage for part two of the conversation, which will cover various use cases that are beginning to emerge as the hearables user base grows and begins to serve as a home for voice assistants.
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Guest: Katherine Prescott - Founder & Editor of Voicebrew
Topic: Multimodal Smart Speaker Growth
Building off their discussion in the previous episode, Katherine and Dave now begin to explore some of the unique use cases that multimodal smart speakers are enabling. They chat about The Food Network Kitchen, an on-demand service that will be deeply integrated into Alexa and really illustrate the evolution of smart speaker devices, as well as other unique use cases specific to multi-modal smart speakers.
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Guest: Katherine Prescott - Founder & Editor of Voicebrew
Topic: Multimodal Smart Speaker Growth
Katherine and Dave highlight the recent Canalys report which stated that smart display shipment share crossed 20% of all devices shipped. The two discuss what it means now that the era of multimodal Voice First devices is officially here.
Follow Katherine on Twitter: @kbprescott
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