 So we hear the SID display week and who are you? I'm Alcin Vomic. I met you at ID Tech X talking about real sense and computer vision. Sorry I say who are you but I always say that so I have to. And when we did the video at ID Tech X, you were showing off the real sense, right? Yep. So that's your previous job, you were Intel? Yes, so I was the Vice President and General Manager for the Perceptual Computing Group at Intel in charge of real sense, machine learning, AI chips and drones. So you went Intel for many, many years but now you're doing something new? Yes. So I decided to use the same technologies but work in the medical devices area. So let me just walk back as you recall what I have always been passionate about for the last 10 years is Perceptual Computing and that's about building sensors and AI to sense and understand the world. So at Intel my work was about using those technologies to make smart machines, autonomous systems such as drones, utilize real sense and make robots that can understand the world. We worked on cameras that can understand what it sees. So a lot of technologies that can enhance machine perception. Today what I'm working on is using similar technologies, sensors, machine learning and artificial intelligence but to make medical devices that help humans sense and understand the world better. So what is the company? So I work for Starkey Hearing Technologies, they are the largest hearing aid maker in the US and I am their Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering in charge of research, development and products. So what you're talking about is that many sensors that would be around the human being? So around or around or where? So it would be all wearable devices, consider them as medical wearable devices. I actually don't have a hearing aid with me but if I showed you their current product it's a tiny little device that goes into the ear canal, you can barely see it or you cannot see it in some products and they have sensors such as microphones or digital signal processor chip speakers which collects the sound signals binorally do signal processing to do a signal to noise ratio enhancement and then play it back to you. So it helps people to hear the world better. People who have lost that sense of hearing or have degraded sense of hearing. And what we're doing now though, the reason I went there is to take that very successful profitable product and embed new sensors and AI to turn that into a continuous health monitoring device. My goal is to take a device that is already a continuously wearable device but turn that into a health monitor. It's going to monitor your physical activity. It's going to detect if you fell down and send an alert. It's going to detect your heart rates, temperature and help you live a better life. It will be hearing aid, it will be your health aid, it will be a visual aid, essentially use sensors and artificial intelligence to help humans live better lives rather than make smarter machines. It's a huge challenge and a huge potential future if it can be realized to use technology to improve health and improve the lives of people, right? So how are you going to make this work and structure it all? You have a plan, right? Yes, obviously. So actually this is what got me excited about living a very successful career and one of the top companies in the world which I have a lot of respect for. I learned all my life lesson there. But I wanted to apply my knowledge and passion in helping the humans in this new assignment which is why I felt so excited about making this career switch. As you said, there is just so much opportunities. As we get older ourselves, we realize there is a world where new technology, most advanced technologies have not really been brought into medical devices to help humans. You know, look at myself. I've spent the last decade working on advanced technology but to make immersive virtual reality devices, drones that can fly by themselves. And I'm able to now use that knowledge and the technology to enhance human health, augment human perception and human experience. But you will fit all this within a hearing aid or can it go in some other sensors somewhere else? Right. So there are two phases to this. Without trying to ask anything secret. Sure. So in my view there are two phases to this. The first phase is to embed new sensors but they do not make the device bulkier than what they are today. But we have the opportunity to embed multiple sensors. Let me give an example. When I joined Intel in year 2000, my most favorite product was the Nokia 55010 as a cell phone. I was carrying it all around with me. You look at that device and compare that with today's smartphone. The device until year 2000 was a single-purpose device. It was just a phone. In contrast, today's smartphone has dozens of new sensors in there and new algorithms powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence. And this phone today is not just a phone but it is my camera. It is my GPS device. And it's my pedometer. It's my internet browser. So phone has gone from single-purpose device to a multi-purpose device. But the phone factor has not become too large or power consumption hasn't drastically increased. It has increased a bit. So my vision of the medical wearable devices are they will go from being single-purpose device today to multi-purpose device offering many more benefits than simple hearing benefits or visual aids. They will become multi-purpose. But that said, you're right. There will be an opportunity to make multiple devices to solve many problems that we have in our life. Is this something you can see results coming very soon? Because I'd like to see, you know, there's all these cool smartwatches and stuff in here and there. But I'd like to see some significant products that really help people. Yes. I like the question because, you know, the way I like to see what I'm really interested in is not just basic research or advanced technology. If I was, then I would be in academia performing research. What I feel most passionate about is taking the most complicated and complex technology but build a product and bring it to market now. So many of the things that I told you are coming to our next product this year. I'll be happy to send you some links and you'll see what, you know, the hearing aid that becomes multi-purpose by adding new sensors and machine learning. Our next product that's coming the second half of this year is actually going to have those sensors and these new use models. I'll give you some examples. A hearing aid that is the best hearing aid in the market by then it would have amazing binaural noise reduction, speech enhancement capabilities, but at the same time it would have sensors and machine learning to double up as your physical activity tracker. It would classify your work run and if you had a fall, it would automatically detect a fall and send an alert to the person that is in your contact and you have chosen to. And it's the device that will also have natural user interface. Like you just simply tap to bring up a user interface. And let me tell you another thing. User interface? Yes, let's say your hearing aid is connected to a TV streamer and your TV streaming sound directly to your hearing aid, but you now want to talk to someone, simply tap your hearing aid and it's going to stop streaming from the TV. Let me give you another example. Power of AI. What if you're using a hearing device that's barely visible and you're an American, but you're visiting the Great Wall of China and you want to ask a Chinese a question in English and you want that person to reply in Chinese and you want to hear back in English, real-time translation. Our next hearing aid that's coming to market with our mobile app plus the hearing device, we will have real-time translation for the first time in this market. What I really feel passionate about is all these technologies that I've spent my last decade learning about, I can bring them to medical devices and help humans live better lives. Something that's amazing that when I hear about hearing aids and when I see some family member using them and I'm like, how is this possible that it lasts so long on a tiny little battery? That means it's one of the most optimized wearable devices in the world right now, right? So I think you just put what's in my mouth. So the way I like to explain it, when I joined my new role as a CTO and EVP of Engineering, I looked at the devices that this industry makes. Imagine the power consumption of that entire thing. It's a complicated device, complex engineering, which got sensors, signal processing chips, processor, and yes, we run real-time noise cancellations there. And you have speakers. Guess how much power that thing consumes? It's less than 10 milliwatts, the entire device. In fact, most use cases is three to five milliwatts. In my past life, a one-watt chip, I would consider it to be low power. Now I'm working on devices that are thousand times lower power consumption. So it lasts like how long between the charges, like weeks or something? So typical hearing aids would last multiple days. And we actually, for the first time this February, and I joined them in August, in February we started shipping our first rechargeable device. So you don't even have to change the batteries. So before you go to sleep, you just put it on the charger, into the charge by itself, and next morning you're ready to go again. So all of these technologies are not coming to medical devices. But all this definitely needs to be something that's not only for people who need hearing aids, right? Eventually, maybe this should be something that everybody is going to use. That, I believe, is the biggest opportunity for this industry. Because today, if you look at the penetration of hearing devices, hearing aids, they are life-changing devices. But very few people actually use them. By World Health Organization statistics, half a billion people in the world have hearing loss. But only 15 million people, 15 million, buy hearing aids every year. Small, tiny fraction. Ten percent. Less than that, right? 15 million out of 500 million people. So yeah, it's about that percentage. Because it's a medical device and you don't go and buy unless you need it. By making it a multi-purpose device, all the additional health benefits you're going to have, many more people will want to get it. It's like what happened again, the cell phone of 2000 to the smartphone of 2018. A lot of people are using phones today. They have become an indispensable part of their lives. That's what is going to happen with medical devices. One of these sensors that I think is kind of amazing, I don't really understand, I don't know if it really works, is those blood pressure monitors that people have that are not on your arm. Could you put that in the hearing aid? Because there's a lot of people that need to monitor their blood pressure. So being respectful of the confidentiality, what I'm going to tell you though, is there is no better place, no better wearable device than embedding sensors and collecting high fidelity information about your health than inside your ear canal. Where does your doctor take your temperature? Where do we get better heart rate data? It's actually inside the ear canal. We have access to the most precious real estate in the human body. So stay tuned for very exciting news in the coming months. And actually I'd love to invite you to your lab in our headquarters to show you some of the technologies that are coming. If you can make all this work, already starting this year, I mean we have 708 billion people in the world and it'd be amazing to make people's lives better. Clearly. And I think there is an aspirational aspect of it where this is not just making a profitable company, more profitable and take a 5,000 people company and grow it to 50,000 people. There is that opportunity to change the landscape but what's most exciting is building products that are going to help a lot of humans. It's immensely satisfying and you're right.