OTC Hearing Aids & Self-Fit Technologies: Interview with Intricon's Delain Wright

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay welcome to another episode of this week in hearing a show where we discuss all of the recent innovation news uh that's happening in the hearing health space hearing aids hearables consumer audio kind of all of the different spaces that uh involve our sense of hearing so with me today i'm joined by delane wright delaine why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do absolutely thanks dave great to see you so i uh we got so much to talk about i won't get stuck here how's that but i have a long history in the hearing business like so many people in this business my parents started with beltone they then moved into their own retail practice and i joined after i got out of college i spent a couple years there went to the manufacturing side and ended up with rexton which was owned by siemens i ended up working with rexton running ruxin for a bit going overseas running another branch called a m hearing which served the nhs and that was all for siemens came back to uh run part of the network and kind of buying group stuff for siemens for a bit um from there i spent a short time helping a kind of the first remote care company called america hears running that for a bid in philadelphia uh was way early so didn't stay there too long ended up helping panasonic launch into their business they they have eyes for kind of psaps and some of the value stuff we're seeing now but it was again ten years early um as a part of trying to help them i ended up connecting with intracon and spent seven years working with intra-con trying to help them in what we call the value-hearing space value hearing health and that's kind of brought me to where i am today so today i spend all of my all of my work time as in hearing and most of it's with intricate so that's awesome well thank you for joining us uh definitely a journey man across the industry jumping into lots of different jobs and roles and uh always love speaking with with you you know whenever we have a chance to to connect at one of these conferences it's been a while um but uh i always appreciate the the back and forth discussions that we have and so you know when we scheduled this i thought um you know there were some things that we were going to talk about and we'll still talk about them today but this was before the fda issued the the new guidelines for over-the-counter hearing aids um and obviously with intracon uh being such a player in this space i thought wow what a fitting and fortuitous timing here uh to to kind of have a conversation that i think will it will definitely go beyond um just kind of our takes i think looking more broadly at i think the the longer term vision here of what the implications of this really mean but before we like jump into all of that i feel it's probably best for the viewers that aren't really familiar with intracon can you give a little bit of background on kind of the story of intercon and and how you sort of would define yourself in the market absolutely so the the quick history of intracon intracon used to be a company called rti that for started in 77 they provided component for the hearing aid so it would make all the switches and and volume controls and trim pots and ended up going more into some of the plastics and they worked across the entire industry fast forward digital comes in they we don't need as many uh volume controls and and switches on a hearing aid we moved into more complete systems and more complete hearing aids and made complete hearing aids for many different people throughout the years i won't name names but there's a bunch of them and made partials for lots of them as well um what kind of redefined intracon in the hearing space was when they got the contract with united healthcare and united healthcare came in as this big giant who wanted to disrupt hearing care and intracon was the explosive provider for that and that's about the time that i joined to say wow it's not just a deal with united health healthcare there is huge opportunity in the value hearing space and spent a long time working in that space i my first experience of value hearing health was when with the nhs and the nhl s in england was probably the best example of value hearing health they would look at the product and say right this clinically shows that we get better value by paying for this feature and uh while they take a lot of criticism they do you know million four hearing aids a year so they they have a lot of hearing aids experience um and they've been doing a long time um so when when we started down this path all of a sudden there was a rumor that elizabeth warren was coming out with otc legislation being based in massachusetts and having a little uh government understanding i said hey i'm a constituent i want to talk to your lead legislative assistant on health and begin a relationship with them they quickly accepted the fact that intricate knew a little bit about the space and began asking for our input and and so we we developed a close relationship um and and while the whole industry was trying to understand how does otc fit in we were probably a little ahead with a single voice on the other side at least from a manufacturing perspective yeah no thank you that's really helpful i think and and to your point there you know intercon being sort of the supplier turned white labeler um you know you you all make a lot of the hearing aids for a lot of these new companies a lot of these new tech companies um you're the white label behind you know some some of these exciting new companies out there and so i think you know when i look at sort of what's going on right now with the otc guidelines and register you know regulations and what's going to come and as a reminder there's still a big review period i mean we're probably not going to see anything implemented until at least um late 2022. and so i think that you know where we're at now i think is everybody's trying to kind of just wrap their heads around what what will this space look like um and so i'm curious to kind of get your thoughts here on what what your takeaways were as somebody that's been involved in a proponent for otc really from the start um when you saw those drafted guidelines issued what were some of the high level takeaways that you have and then i think we can start to get into maybe some of the implications i'll say that i think a lot of they looked at this in my opinion the fda looked at this from the patient's perspective and how we're going to really help people and you know until we get deeper penetration rates until we give people different ways of getting access to hearing care which now we know affects so many other aspects and that's come out so clear from a cognitive standpoint you know it's all over the place and they the fda clear clearly their goal and i think they weighed all the different opinions and all the different risks but they said you know this is in the best interest of people and and so they they kind of held true to that i think it was clear to me that at least stood out the most there's a lot in there and uh it was the fact that you know they did put enough i don't know if we call them restrictions but but uh barriers of entry barriers they're going to maintain a high quality product right whether it's to do with uh you know distortion and noise limits or latency limits or the frequency response has to be you know certain bandwidth um or you know the way it's smooth then you know you can't have a you know a bad response um and i think that's probably going to keep some of the people that had big eyes uh thinking oh wow great opportunity to go right it's i don't see it happening that way and i think that's in the best interest of of you know certainly the manufacturers that have pushed technology over the last you know 30 years um and and well as well as you know um people who make a high quality product of course some of these big consumer electronic companies will figure out how to do it but they will it will take some time i think yeah yeah that's a good point i mean i'm looking at it too and thinking okay so you have um you know the there's the 120 decibel output um as something that i would imagine is going to be challenged by the industry or a lot of the different professionals that might cite that that creeps up uh toward the severe end of the spectrum um so i definitely think there are a few things that stand out i read carl strom's uh summary in the hearing review i haven't had a chance to read through all 114 pages myself probably never will um but give me both yeah but i'll let carl do the heavy lifting there um so i want to make sure to cite him because if you haven't had a chance to read his takeaway he did go through it and um i think you know there were a few things he called out but i think broadly speaking they did kind of follow a lot of the recommendations a lot of the consensus and here's the fact of the matter is it's you know it's it's inevitable now it's coming and uh so i think you know what's been interesting is i feel as if and maybe you can speak to this too as somebody that was pro otc from the start i'm sure there was a lot of animosity and hostility uh toward you but i feel like there's been just sort of a gradual shift in the overall mentality within the professionals and even in the industry of just you know kind of understanding that it's it is what it is and i think what's exciting is i think a lot of people are now realizing there's actually a lot of positive that can come from this and to your point it's all about the patient i think that there needs to be some safeguards in place so that you know that they don't there there isn't bad actors out there that are just completely manipulating the system and abusing um the loopholes or whatever that might be i think this actually clears a lot of that up um but i i do think that what we're going to see is um just so many more people that are i think going to be more willing to engage in this whole idea of of treating their hearing loss with all kinds of new solutions i think that's what's most exciting is that it's not necessarily going to just be hearing aids i think the consumer tech side is really catching up in a significant way and what we'll see i think and what we're already seeing in the market are a lot of these consumer devices that are very much oriented around being consumer devices first but they have these secondary use cases that are becoming more popular like airpods pro conversation boost for one example you're gonna see i think a lot more of that start to enter into the market to where it really is catering toward this otc demographic yeah no i i agree and i think uh that will definitely happen i think there's a whole different aspect to that david that we can talk about you know i i think the real winner in in otc will be the people who are able to deal with the psychology of the hearing impaired and get into into the new ways to serve those people yeah okay so this is really interesting um i you know we had a chance to talk a little bit beforehand and uh i thought it might make sense here to share about the conference that you just attended the digital health conference and um because what you just said there there's a lot to that and i think that it's worth really unpacking here so why don't we just kind of begin um by you sharing about this conference you were really raving about it and kind of like your takeaways coming out of it and then ultimately how it coincides with everything that's happening with otc yeah sure you know i i for a while now i i believe that um [Music] we have to change the way we engage the customer the consumer and so um [Music] it led me to start thinking about different ways and looking at ai and machine learning and all these different things i go to this and so i just went to this conference and it happened to be in boston but it was probably the best conference i've ever been to uh from a wow standpoint um they were you know i was telling you earlier the tagline for this conference was you know dear future we're coming for you and that really embraces digital health and you know the one thing that i took away from that was we have to figure out how to how to embrace that that digital side of our business how it interacts with the patient so i'm happy to go as deep as you want me yeah no okay so uh so this digital health conference what was the name of the conference it was it was health it was like hlth yeah hlth yeah 2021. and so if i understand it i mean it's a big digital health conference obviously that's a big theme um so walk us through some of the things some of the companies that were there and just kind of some of the different ideas that are percolating in your head following it yeah so it was what amazed me when i showed up was this was all people who were engaging different healthcare areas so you had people showing how they were interacting with uh you know cpap machine diabetes um you know the mental health thing was all over the place you know you had companies like uh you know headspace and calm and real all people who are really dealing in a whole new way uh with with the consumer the patient um and and you know what i took away from that was you know we as an industry have led in the the product but we've lagged in the in our way of embracing new technology and and you know going back to the and when i say new technology i'm talking about how do we deal with that patient and i mean i i i think uh i'm happy to go into my own personal thing that got me there now if you look yeah go for it so what really made what changed my mind was on on how and the winners within this otc space was the fact that a year ago um january all of a sudden look and i realized my daughter's getting married and you know i got to be ready for that and so like every parent not another a lot of a lot of parents you think i gotta drop i gotta drop 20 pounds conveniently covet hit and so i decided i'd jump on my peloton every day without exception and the other thing i did was i joined new and knew it was pretty early days you know but but it was the right timing for me and and i thought i'm just going to try this now i've been the 20 up 20 down guy for 20 years you know so it always worked and then it didn't you know and i never quite understood why so what i was amazed with thinking that nobody gets inside my head was how noom got inside my head and let me just give you a few examples you know they start they come in real nice saying hey you know we're glad you're here and tell us about yourself and what are your goals this is all this is all digital this is all a bot of course they say anytime you want to call and talk to a live person we're here we'll meet you where you are you know but they they begin to get ins you know they begin to say let us help you unders let us understand you and uh next thing you know they're asking me to do things like you know tell me would you would you weigh this morning and tell me what did you eat today and you know they made it extremely simple to give them that information um and and then then they would say how much time do you have every day for us to maybe help you understand better eating and so of course they want to tell you about the sugars that are in the fruit and they want to tell you how many calories these that bag of nuts you had it was a whole day's worth of total caloric when you think you're doing something healthy that's maybe not the right thing um but but they then go deeper and they go really deep they start getting into the psychology do you know why you eat you know do you know what your triggers are you know some people eat as comfort some people eat stress relief some people eat because oh you're in the wrong environment you know when you eat in this environment and now they're telling me about it and oh you know you uh seems you logged 2 000 calories after you happened to have three beers last night maybe there's a correlation for you to eating and and doesn't mean you can't have those beers just make sure you're mindful of what you're eating when you do it anyhow my point was they got inside my head and then all of a sudden at 10 o'clock in the morning i hear my phone go off and i know exactly what it is it is newm asking me what i had for breakfast and i didn't didn't have to look at my phone and and so that's just a little example of how they got inside my head and and then then of course you know once you start those habits you understand the habits you can do that so i looked at that and then i looked at what intracon is a big diabetes supplier we do lots of diabetes products for a big big company and i looked at a couple of other areas and i started drawing a correlation between that and hearing you know nobody wants a hearing aid there's a stigma you know represents age they aren't easy to adjust to because you've got to go through a little training if you want to be good and the importance of on you on your rehabilitation we're all starting to figure that out um but i began to realize that the otc winner was going to be the the company that figured out how to go along the journey and educate the person so you say oh you know make sure that when you have your new hearing aid you know if you're going to go into a restaurant yeah they're going to help but make sure you pick the right spot to sit you know make sure that you you talk to people around you and educate them that look if they're going to turn your back jewelry i can't hear you and and all the things that we as professionals and you know i look at the audiologists and the hearing dispenser and i think they got to have so much talent they got to do so many things right you know they got to understand the technology and the medicine the science they got to understand how to run a business but big part of dealing with that customer is dealing with the psychology and that's what's kept other people from being successful and and you know where that all leads to from an otc standpoint is what's kept otc or dtc in my case because i've engaged with numerous gtc companies over the years um from being successful as a return rate right return rate is a killer you know all sudden you know you get 40 back and that's not a good business model no matter how many you sell you've got two things you've got high cost and you've also got unsatisfied users so we've got to get on to both of those things in in this psychology and embracing the patient will do that in in my opinion in a different way that's exactly what the professional does they engage with that that patient all the way along you know they fit them they understand them they do a bank of tests then they then they put their hand on their shoulder and say i'm really going to help you because i care and they and they do and i've got tons of friends who care a lot and do a great job i just want to expand that to a broader group because i think it's in the best interest of everybody um and i also think it's in the best interest honestly of the profession yeah i mean there's a lot to unpack here so i think sorry i covered two no no no you didn't at all that was fantastic i loved the personal story too i think that really resonates because uh i think that's you know that for anybody that's followed with with a lot of my thinking through my blog or my podcast uh future year um this has been a lot of kind of what i've been trying to get at which is you know 2014 with the resound links in the first made for iphone hearing aids that was such a game changer and it wasn't because the you know you were the the reason that was such a game changer was because you basically brought the hearing aid into a much broader internet connected ecosystem and so the first wave was the programmable apps that they had so you had all the hearing aid manufacturers sort of simultaneously from i would say like the last seven years have been um iterating to the point where they're making sure that their devices are as compatible with as many different bluetooth protocols and different handsets different smartphones on the hardware side and then on the software side making it so that they have these apps that are more and more robust more capable and the next phase of it is going to be about integrating broader ecosystem type things and i think this the the example that you made there and i think for anybody that's listening that really you know a lot of the information that you consume about you know what's kind of going on in the world if it's limited to just this industry i would really suggest looking at some of these companies that he's talking about you know noom uh headspace calm you know just to name a couple where you know what they're really looking at is how do we how do we basically get the a lifestyle change how do we start to really create a like it's a twofold thing one is we're gonna log a longitudinal data set so you're gonna have your own personalized data that is logging some element of your life so it could be your mental health it could be your diet it could be the exercise that you do it could be some of the different biometrics like your heart rate right so you know historically in order to kind of get a good understanding of what your blood pressure for example looked like you would go to the doctor and you'd do the blood you know the blood pressure you know with the cuff and all that and you get like two readings a year now we have devices like an apple watch um that are being able to have the ability to capture that on the minute every hour of you know your your life more or less so you create this very very robust longitudinal data set so this is what's happening like broadly speaking right now with wearables is that they're turning into and and these apps they're all kind of turning to data capture devices of your own you know basically your own uh psychology or your your anatomy like whatever it might be and what's going to come next is going to be layering on proactive insight into that so it's just like you said with noom where you get deeper and deeper into the the nudges where they start to kind of understand okay you're you're consistently eating late in the night you know that's not necessarily good to do before you go to bed maybe we should trigger it so that you start eating earlier in the day okay so how does this apply to our world well it applies in our world because the ear is the portal into the brain the ear is the you know basically the hub that is going to make so much of this run much in the same way that the wrist is for a lot of the biometric monitoring a lot of the psychology a lot of the emotional data is probably going to be captured whether it be in your airpods or in something like a hearing aid and so i think that what's fascinating is to start to think about these devices as a much broader um a much broader focal point into an ecosystem that is laden with all kinds of interesting applications and you think about the patient demographic so you have things like you know being able to monitor the acoustic data and see are you going into any challenging acoustical situations um you know kind of looking at it more in the lens of maybe cognitive health and looking at you know we know these to be detrimental things you're not engaging with anybody you know so it's it's a lot of that kind of stuff where to your point i'm not really sure that like the winner of the otc market necessarily is going to be like the the lowest cost device you know it's not going to just be another hearing aid that is 400 instead of 500 what it's likely going to be are going to be these ecosystem plays and the device becomes then kind of table stakes yes of course you'll have premium offerings especially when it comes to a use case like hearing loss where you have levels of severity that warrant more hardware processing and so on but a lot of this kind of i think will ultimately boil down to what does this do for me in my life you know like my overall lifestyle and i think there's so much potential here when we think about a population that is already sort of outfitting themselves with in the ear devices you see it with airpods and this is going to continue where you're just going to have this norm that people wear these things for extended periods of time and you start to layer on lots of interesting new use cases and applications through various integrations um it's just to me we're at a really beginning part of an entirely new paradigm within this space which is it's not really about just hearing loss hearing loss is one facet it might be the most important facet for some but it's just one part of it it's now a much broader set of use cases that can be tailored and geared toward with these devices i i think you touched on it there's so many directions we can go as far as you know asking the patient you know hey we can tell you didn't put your hearing aids on yesterday you know and then then what i think is the most important is the education you know making people understand why they have to wear these hearing aids that's what the audiologist or the dispenser does is they say look you're not to adjust to these you've been without this sound and we all know the the process they go through but we've got to figure out how to do that in a in a you know efficient way where everybody gets the whole story as much as they need we engage them until they finally they give up and they say yes you're right i do do better with my hearing aids so back to what point i i really believe that in the end we've all been frustrated with the delay of otc it's kind of like how in the world can you pass a law and then it doesn't even happen for an additional two years yeah no but but i think in the end what what has happened is the people who are our customers i mean the the senior have in the last two years all of a sudden come to terms with what we're doing now you know they all got grandkids they zoom it you know they follow me what a qr code is they all are realizing these things can they all see their doctor over zoom so why wouldn't they see their audiologist even if it's a bot over zoom you know um so i i think it's really gonna end up in our favor and the the switch for the swing uh to acceptance of otc is going to be dramatic i think our biggest problem is going to be figuring out how to manufacture them fast enough yeah well so there's all the perceptions yeah exactly there's a couple there's a couple interesting things that you said there though because i think that if i were watching this and i may am i and i'm a professional i might be thinking well what am i going to be out of a job and i think that first and foremost you got to understand like the answer is no absolutely not i actually think that this grows the demand for your services more than anything because at the end of the day you're going to have a portion of people that will be uh very much do-it-yourself self-fit that portion exists in everything so you have to assume that it's going to take place in this industry as well and so some of the otc clientele if you will will be will fall in that bucket but i think that going off of like this whole idea of it being a broader ecosystem you know a lot of this is going to be you know the device might really be doing a good job of gathering that and helping to kind of nudge along lifestyle changes but i think where the professional can really stand to gain with this is they can kind of see then you know i envision in the future i've had this conversation with kat peno who's with new hera now um of of like these basically health coaches where you basically you're you're taking us a look at a year's worth of data or six months worth of data since the last time that you've had a chance to talk with this patient and you look at a lot of what's happening with data sharing right now the the hipaa compliance fears are starting getting kind of get broken down because a lot of companies like apple are doing a really good job with being the mediator of this information so you could totally see how you log this information in your device it gets stored in apple health and then it can be shared across to your medical professional so your audiologist could literally be seeing um some different indications throughout you know that last time that they've had a chance to talk with you and it tells a story and that story really informs them into the better way in which you should be treating this person so you get you get such a clearer picture of what's gone on rather than you know what's going on today where it's like so tell me about your experience with this and they're all frustrated and they're trying to kind of anecdotally refer to all the different frustrations when you actually have the data in front of you and you have all these markers in there where you can really see okay well you're frustrated here in this you know it seems to be that every day at you know you say that you're frustrated at work and you know so you're able to kind of maybe give them different suggestions on you know whether it's a an augmentation with a different piece of equipment or an application that you can be using something that can enhance that particular situation that they're running into all the time i just think that this whole idea where you as the professional would be more equipped with data and information into what's actually going on with your patient opens a myriad of new doors and i just think that to your point a lot of this could be facilitated by a bot it can be done through just the ai that's going to be living within the applications and in in the in the hardware itself but i think that that's that's going to appease some people i think a lot of people will want the personal touch that comes along with this is my this is my audiologist and i think the exciting part is you actually are starting to see um sort of a scenario being formed right now where the audiologist is much it's twofold on one hand they're gonna i think be a higher relevance in the broader healthcare ecosystem because i think that they're suddenly you know if you have a heart rate monitor that's baked into one of these otc devices a cardiologist suddenly has a new vested interest in you because you are now you you basically fit a new modality that might be the heart rate sensor that their patient needs to have so and there's lots of different examples like that where different medical professionals specialty doctors general physicians have a new vested interest in what's going on at the ear as the entry point into the brain the other is that i think you just have uh you basically elevate yourself to being not just about hearing loss but it's the psychology of this and it's a lot of the secondary effects that you know the isolation the loneliness a lot of these things and and being able to help steer along healthier behaviors that we know to be so detrimental to things like cognitive decline and and a lot of the dementia fears and all of that yeah and i completely agree with you that we should be the audiologist should be embracing lots of other specialties because there's so many things whether it's balance or tin listeners you know different things the other thing that i do believe that the successful otc um the winner who will be and i think we're going to find lots of people out there and all of a sudden we're going to find somebody who kind of kind of takes the lead but it's going to be someone who embraces multi ways to get to you a little like the banking yes there's the channel yep and you know i i've i've had that opinion from the beginning and you know well well i know a lot of people may not like everything i say i have maintained a lot of good friends in this industry that even though they don't like it they'll they'll nudge me and say yeah we know you know you know you've been around too long we can't get rid of you and uh and they know it's changing oh but but the one thing i have done all the way through and whether it was with the launch of your venture which we tried to do an otc price based product through the professional or whether it's other dtc's where we said great let's refer out and let's get a relationship early on um unfortunately that hasn't been embraced real well but i think it's gonna have to happen and i think it's gonna come and one other thing that i i'm a big believer in that will be successful uh determine success is the company who figures out on the front end of otc who who the right patients are who do front end testing whether it's using some type of cognitive test or whether they ask other series of questions whether they determine middle ear function is it really is your middle ear really working if it's not then you can do that online just like you can elsewhere even there's even companies doing videoscopy you know i know google's looking at that right now you know the one who figures that out and then figures out the relationship to go to other places i will be a big winner because you know what we we've got to get that return rate down we've got to make sure we have satisfaction through this channel because that that's the big driver you know if people return the product because they're not happy yeah that otc thing didn't work you know we've got to keep people in the seat and we've got to make the hearing aids stick not just for the money but for their satisfaction yeah no i completely agree i think it you know obviously the last thing you want again is a scenario where people opt-in okay this is a little bit less expensive than what i had been previously offered um so they opt for you know a 500 700 device but it's the same thing where for whatever reason they they ultimately decide to put it in the drawer and not use it or return it um and so i think it's a matter of combating that and i and that i think will take time because i i agree with you i think it's a matter of setting the right expectations and identifying the right uh i guess the right solution per each patient um i get you know i want to touch on centebo for a little bit because i know that that's that's in the news as well with what you all are doing and so i want to give you a chance to kind of explain that because it ties in directly to what you just said there in this idea of kind of having it be uh you know as you follow out this trend of self-fit i mean you have to ultimately understand that that is a innovation in its in and of itself and it's only going to continue to get more robust and more capable and what what that can ultimately do from a self-fitting standpoint and so santibo i know is kind of on the forefront of that so do you want to describe a little bit about what cintibo is and some of the breakthroughs that you've had yeah absolutely so just as kind of an overview you know syntebo is based on a well-established framework of hearing science called psychoacoustics so we're really determining as loudness versus intensity and we do that in a very unique way and the goal it's not a it's not a com complete software solution it's a complete software test of your hearing and that we use running speech in very complicated noise environments and it's it can it's very efficient we in about three minutes can come up with what would be equivalent or better fitting protocol for a hearing aid with just someone listening to speech picking the best choice um and the science is is is very deep and i don't we won't go too much into it um but you know it's uh it's something where we we've been working on this for a long time um we're well in the process we've gone through the usability and just as in the last couple of days we've we've reached the the institutional approval so that we can move on into the clinical so we're well into that we're well planned for it um and at that you know when we get a little further into the clinical or once maybe once we get past the next hurdle uh which we don't expect to take too long uh i'd love to bring somebody back who can walk you through the science i you know david akbari who's been we've been involved together since the beginning of otc and he's been extremely involved with the otc i think would be a delightful guest for you he's uh he really understands his stuff deep and he presents it in a very clear way so let me know i'm certainly welcome willing to come back or send him here so when we're ready maybe i'll reach out to you awesome well i think it's good to know that like another thing that intracon is doing is you know with the basically creating a self-fit test uh that [Music] yeah and this this test will be a a way that you know we can vote we can put this in the right uh other software programs it'll give more efficiency it's a little more user-friendly than your you know some some of the tests that are fda approved they're good tests but this also is a good test for the purposes of fitting the hearing aid yeah so and i think that kind of kind of closes the loop here which is you know um this is coming and you're going to have a lot of these devices are going to have things like self-fit tests programmed inside of them you're going to have that option you know i think you said it well which is the the interest of this whole thing has been about the patient um and i think that there is maybe my personal opinion is that the the fears that this is somehow going to replace the professional or somehow make the current offering irrelevant is the furthest thing from the truth i think it actually stands to really strengthen um all of this i think that it's just that we've we have to understand how how paltry the adoption of hearing solutions has been um historically when we know this to be something that is is so pervasive globally you know it's a it's a problem literally in every single part of the world and it's you know we we live in a time now where our population's continuing to get older um live longer in life and so it's just something that i think we have to tackle in dramatically new ways and i think this is the start of it i mean i think that the regula the regulatory piece is important however i kind of personally think that the technology will probably just work itself out in such a way and uh and i think it's good actually that the fda is actually now sort of setting the rules and saying look the this is the game the game has changed there's now all kinds of new uh opportunity for new players to get involved i i agree with you i think that the software space might honestly be a lot more interesting in time because i think the hardware is going to kind of become table stakes absolutely you know at least for this portion of the market which is this mild to moderate portion um and so i think that you know this conversation about uh the broader ecosystem the platform that caters to that you know being able to integrate into these you know peripheral applications like a calm you know i think you you just saw the the sponsorship or the partnership they have with lebron you know like these are billion dollar companies digital health companies that are they have huge footprints so you honestly might see people come into their you know their first hearing uh aid or something that's akin to it actually through calm or through these different companies because it's like you know i need to have i want to be able to have you know i i want all of these other things that come along with the device like having this assistant in my head that's giving me nudges about you know it's time to do a meditation or whatever it might be that they get into there's a giant amount of things that they're trying to tackle that goes way beyond meditation that like you said explores into mental health and really trying to kind of i think cater to the broader population um so that's the themes that i'm kind of thinking about right now that i think are gonna make uh make or break the winners like you said i think there won't be one i think there will be many winners in this space because i think that you're gonna have a lot of different kinds of offerings that appeal to different demographics and ultimately my hope is that we see a whole hell of a lot more people start to get interested in actual interest in in approaching this rather than feel as if they're obligated and it's the seven to ten year gap where it's gotten so bad that it's like they're resentful that they even have to come and see you it's gonna be people that are excited to see and what comes from that complete inversion i think a lot of positive absolutely absolutely and just to pick up on a couple of the things you said you know i for all the criticism that the fda has taken in so many ways and they continue to take i've actually believe they've gotten this one right and so i'm really really pleased with the what they came up with the other thing you know i i have had a bit of a global experience because i've had an opportunity to sell hearing aids all around the world you know and i'm hearing sold in about 40 different countries um under value hearing product um but one thing that's clear to me just based on interactions i've had from people around the world is everybody's watching what's happening right now with the otc legislation the states they don't deal with the same regulation they also will look at this and say right this is a viable solution and we can in a credible way and i think credibility is key here you know the fact that the fda did this came out and said yes this is a credible way for you to get real care just like doing with mental health and all these other specialties um i think will have a huge impact and so i actually think i think we're in for some exciting times i think we're going to see huge growth in the whole industry i mean everybody says that but i certainly believe i believe it too i do too maybe i'm just an eternal optimist who knows i'm excited i think that um i think that you know this review period will be good we'll be able to hash out i think as an industry the things that we really feel strongly need to be revised but by and large i think that what we're going to see is an expansion in the market i feel very strongly about that and i think that we are you know not too far away from it really starting to come into fruition and this i just continue to believe that the secondary effects of a of an expanding market present a lot of really interesting things that i think will be advantageous to just about every entity in this industry so long as they're willing to seize them i think if you just adhere to the status quo and just kind of head in the sand like this is how i've always done business i wish the best for you i really hope that you're able to to make that succeed but i think the people that really do embrace this and find a way to make this a part of their more uh holistic offering i i think will do so so well into the future so that's all i got thoughts yeah one one thing i think in right in line with that i do believe that you know this has been a bit of a battle back and forth as far as the ot legislation but i think there's been a lot of different leaders and organizations that have probably sat on the sideline a bit because they they you know you don't want to get it wrong but i think now the legislation's out now they see yes this is going through i think we're going to see a lot of a lot of really powerful um endorsement of this model so i think that will really help them because you know it is i mean i mentioned it's all about credibility you know all of a sudden there's credibility in the otc space so couldn't hear more that that that's all i got awesome delane this has been so so much fun always great chatting with you hope to see you in the not-too-distant future at one of these shows so thanks for everybody who tuned in here we will chat with you next time hey great to see you dave thank you so much [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

2021-11-07 20:36

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