Future Ear Radio

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.

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. 

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.

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:

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.)

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/ 

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.