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Voice First Health

Voice First Hearables with Dave Kemp

Ep. 15

In this episode, Teri welcomes Dave Kemp, a leader in the intersection between voice first technology and hearables. He is part of a company called Oak Tree Products and they provide medical supplies and devices to the hearing technology industry. He also has a blog called FuturEar.co where he documents the rapid technological breakthroughs that are occurring in the hearables niche, including biometric sensors and voice assistants that are being incorporated into the hearable devices.


Key Points from Dave Kemp

  • In a voice first world, in order for there to be an efficient exchange of information, a person involved in that communication exchange has to be able to hear
  • Where hearables are going in a world where we are rapidly adopting voice technology.

FuturEar.co

  • The blog is about telling stories around innovative use cases for new in-the-ear devices.
  • A lot of new things can be done with Bluetooth connected audio devices.
  • In the ear devices will continue to become more computerized and become more like stand-alone computers.

The Voice First/Hearing First world

  • Data shows that one of the fastest growing demographics for smart assistant usage is the older population.
  • Hearing loss is a prevalent problem and presents a challenge because people with hearing loss can’t hear Alexa. There can be an amplification solution in a hearing aid and then Alexa can be ported into it. That will not only improve accessibility but also empower people with hearing loss by enabling them to have complete control over their environment. 
  • The older population is poised to be the early adopters of the in-the-ear voice first technology.
  • The functions of smartphones will be migrated gradually to smart assistants.

Developments in the hearing assistant devices niche

  • Amazon released the “Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit” in 2017.
  • The kit offers a new way to bring Alexa to portable, on-the-go devices such as hearables and more. The kit enables OEMs to add Alexa to their devices with minimum investment in hardware or integration efforts.
  • Qualcomm just announced more ways their chips can be used to embed Alexa into devices.
  • Smart assistants will facilitate the creation of smart homes where the older population can live independently without the need to move into a retirement home.
  • Numerous new biometric sensors are constantly being embedded into in-the-ear devices. The sensors can track fitness and detect different things.
  • PPG sensors (embedded in hearing aids and other hearables) that can identify blood pressure, heart rate, and other things are expected to come up. A PPG sensor is the optical sensor that, for example, an Apple watch uses to record a person’s heart rate.
  • The first biometric sensors were being embedded in hearing aids since early 2018.
  • A biometric sensor manufacturer and sensor supplier to the hearing aid OEMs has announced that they will have a commercially available PPG sensor by 2019 so the OEMs can implement them into their devices.
  • The largest challenge to overcome with all the developments going on is privacy and security.

The Meaning of Voice First Health to Dave

  • There are so many efficiencies to be had here. The area for improvement is all the clerical work in the actual medical setting from how doctors record notes to the healthcare administration processes.
  • Capitalizing on the new efficiencies to make the whole medical system more efficient.
  • He thinks the smart assistant will eventually be a person’s personal nurse. Through voice analyzation they will be able to understand a person’s state of health. Amazon has a patent based on Alexa being able to tell if a person is sick based on the inflection of their voice and it would prompt them to seek medical help.


Links and Resources in this Episode

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  • 68. Siri for Hand Washing with Eric Sauve of Speebly

    27:41
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  • 67. Voice in the Operating Room with Heather Utzig of Pragmatic Voice

    26:04
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  • 66. Voice User Interface Design for Healthcare with Ilana Meir

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  • 63. Voice and Wearables with Dave Kemp of Future Ear

    23:33
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  • 62. Healthcare in a Post-Pandemic World with Brian Roemmele

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Over the long winding arc of his career, Brian has built and run payments and tech businesses, worked in media, including the promotion of top musicians, and explored a variety of other subjects along the way.He actively shares his findings and observations across fora like Forbes, Huffington Post, Newsweek, Slate, Business Insider, Daily Mail, Inc, Gizmodo, Medium, Quora (An exclusive Quora top writer for: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013), Twitter (quoted and published), Around the Coin (earliest cryptocurrency podcast), Breaking Banks Radio and This Week In Voice on VoiceFirst.FM that surfaces everything from Bitcoin to Voice Commerce.Key Points from Brian!Where he sees voice making the biggest impact in times like these with the Coronavirus pandemic.How voice technology will change healthcare and life in general as we know it for the better.Brian’s Predictions On The Future Impact Of VoiceWe are going to see a redesign of public interaction surfaces (like over the air hand gestures) and more things interacting with voice.Our devices will also become an interface actuated by voice or touch to open doors, choose locations and elevators, open car doors, and a number of similar things, because people will be galvanized with the thought that there could be some dangerous virus years after the Coronavirus.He recently studied a lot of information about the 1918 pandemic and he was able to dive into the mindset of what happened after the pandemic to determine what changed in society. He was able to come up with some of the similarities between that pandemic and the current pandemic, and determine just how society today will change after the Coronavirus pandemic is over.One of the discoveries that were made after the 1918 pandemic was that copper surfaces had an immediate response in devitalizing or deactivating viruses.Certain minerals and metals also devitalize viruses and bacteria through something called Contact Kill which has been widely known for hundreds of years. People in Sumerian times were actually using silver and copper utensils, which some people saw as a sign of wealth, when in reality the utensils actually killed viruses and bacteria, and made their food more presentable.Brian feels that hospital surfaces and beds should have a copper alloy coding to safeguard against viruses and other pathogens.He thinks that there will need to be a way to diagnose people through voice, and how he sees that happening is through different bio-sensors that will be put on a person when they walk into a hospital and start diagnosing them before a medical attendant gets to see them.He insists that that those biosensor devices must not be on the internet in any way so that they’re never compromised. Those devices will be tuned to a user’s personality, outlook, goals, motivations, and they will notice changes in someone’s sleep patterns, and other things that serve as an early warning system.Brian has looked at several studies on Coronaviruses and realized that there are several early warning systems like sleep pattern disturbances, digestive pattern disturbances, change in temperature, change in heart rate variability, change in blink rate, and other things.There are a number of signs of any virus within a human body, and one of those things is a change in someone’s temperature gradient. If one has a voice first device on them, it can be notified of their change in temperature and take the necessary action.The Catalyst to Overhaul MedicineThe Coronavirus pandemic will be the catalyst to overhaul medicine and Brian highlights the fact that times of crisis are the only times in history that anything changes.He predicts the hospital room and points of contact will change because of the amount of attention we have put on the Coronavirus.He highlights the importance of self-sufficiency within countries in order to ensure that people don’t find themselves in the same kind of trouble they’re in right now with the Coronavirus pandemic, and he feels voice first technology will be a great start towards that.Monitoring People’s Vital Signs to Predict PandemicsBrian says with proper human telemetry, a physician can figure out the health of a person.There are other signs people can use to determine if someone has a virus or whether they are ill.He actually has a voice first AI with cameras that can determine that someone presents like they’re sick.He highlights the fact that if people’s health could be monitored electronically, then we would have an early warning sign of an oncoming pandemic. People are not very good observers of their own health conditions and even with the current healthcare systems no one is ever really sure whether a diagnosis is exact, but with a system of telemetry, we can have accurate diagnosis.It all boils down to being able to collect tons of data that is voice first. A great scenario would be someone asking their voice first device how they are doing, and the device would tell them exactly what their health is like.The Roaring 20s That Will Come Out Of The Current PandemicSociety will be re-organized and there’s going to be more telecommuting.Companies will not need to have a lot of their employees going back to their work stations because they will see a need for them to work from their homes as long as they can do their work. Technology is going to inform that.With properly designed voice devices for the corporate environment, work mates will be able to easily communicate with each other from their different locations.Brian walked into one of his companies in the early 2000s, asked most of the employees to go work from home, and productivity exploded as a result.Before the 1918/1919 pandemic, the average person was not interested in the telephone and the radio, but after the pandemic, they were very interested in both technologies because they were technologies that connected people through strong and meaningful communication.He predicts that as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic there will be a release of productivity, creativity, and socialization. He feels voice technology will lead the way in that.Links and Resources in this EpisodeThe Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula Coursewww.VoiceFirst.ExpertBrian Roemmele on TwitterBrian Roemmele on QuoraBrian on Linkedin