Latest / Starkey Sound Bites: Hearing Aids, Tinnitus, and Hearing Healthcare / Starkey Omega AI+ Explained

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Starkey Omega AI+ Explained · Starkey Sound Bites: Hearing Aids, Tinnitus, and Hearing Healthcare

• 0:05
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Welcome to Starkey Tumbites.
• 0:07
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I'm your host, Dave Fabry, and also the Chief Hearing Health Officer at Starkey.
• 0:12
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Today we have two veterans joining us with this podcast.
• 0:15
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I'm still waiting to get their five-time uh guest blue jackets, but uh I may have to wait uh quite a while for that, and the budget of for our podcast is very low.
• 0:24
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But before we dive in, I'd ask for our followers to please go ahead and hit subscribe and like and share with your friends if you think this topic will be of interest.
• 0:33
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Uh it's a way that helps us enable more and more people to hear better and live better.
• 0:38
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Today we're taking a closer look at Omega AI+, our newest technology platform that I know we're really excited about, and I think by the end of this podcast, listeners will be too.
• 0:49
  Dr. Dave Fabry: The name may sound familiar, but what's inside represents meaningful advances in artificial intelligence, sound processing, and patient benefits.
• 1:00
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So joining me, as I said, are two veterans of this podcast, uh Starkey's Chief Audiology Officer, Dr.
• 1:06
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Sara Burdak, and Starkey's Chief Technology Officer, Dr.
• 1:09
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Achin Bomek.
• 1:11
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Welcome to both of you.
• 1:12
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Welcome back.
• 1:13
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Thank you, Dave.
• 1:13
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: It's always a pleasure to talk to you and to your audience.
• 1:16
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Yes, I agree.
• 1:17
  Dr. Sara Burdak: I'm excited to be here.
• 1:18
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Our audience.
• 1:19
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So this is this is not me.
• 1:21
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So uh when uh, and I really appreciate your guys taking the time.
• 1:24
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We got a very busy week ahead of us this week as we're launching with Starkey Day the new product.
• 1:30
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But when people hear Omega AI+, they might be inclined to assume that this is simply an iterative or or you know a small upgrade from Omega AI.
• 1:41
  Dr. Dave Fabry: How is Omega AI+ truly different?
• 1:45
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Archin, you want to start?
• 1:47
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Sure.
• 1:47
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And uh in fact, I would, if you permit, I would start at a little bit of a higher level and then I get into the technology of the product.
• 1:52
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: You mentioned artificial intelligence.
• 1:54
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Yes.
• 1:55
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: That is what is uh new today in uh technology landscape.
• 1:59
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: It's on a tear because uh in decades of computational processing of signals, we finally hit the ability to mimic the way human brain processes sensory signals.
• 2:13
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Whether it is vision, hearing, smell, taste, multi-sensory integration, you're starting to see computers exceeding human capabilities, literally achieving and surpassing superhuman abilities in intelligence.
• 2:26
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: At Starkey, we are focused on bringing the technology to enable superhuman hearing.
• 2:32
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: This is not a marketing buzzword.
• 2:34
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: We want us to not only restore the lost senses of hearing, we want to tap into the latest breakthrough technologies in deep neural networks, which I'll elaborate in copying and mimicking deeper and deeper layers of the human cortex in the brain in order to give us and endow us with the abilities of superhuman hearing.
• 2:58
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: That is what is the big reason for all of the excitement we have with this generation, Omega A, powered by generation four of our industry-leading neuroprocessor.
• 3:10
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, and the only thing I would add to that is that in addition to superhuman hearing, it's really been our focus since 2018, as you both know, on intelligent hearing, health and wellness, and intelligent assistance, all which have been made possible.
• 3:24
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So I would say it's really a superhuman advantage.
• 3:27
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And don't you have amazing features to talk about that are in Omega I that enhances the capabilities of our hearing aids in all of those three dimensions?
• 3:35
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Indeed.
• 3:35
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And I hope we'll dive in and have time for each.
• 3:38
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But let's start with job one for hearing aids, which is really always better hearing.
• 3:42
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Talk about the improvements that we have.
• 3:45
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So let me just uh set the technology uh basis of it and hand over to Dr.
• 3:49
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Bardak to explain the amazing benefits it's having on patients.
• 3:53
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: At the heart of Omega I Plus is the G4, the generation four of our neuroprocessor.
• 3:59
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So as I explained, I gave away some of the secrets of copying deeper layers of human brain's processing of sound.
• 4:08
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: This is the big intuition that we started with uh the generation one of neuroprocessor when we launched it with uh Genesis generation of products in 2023.
• 4:18
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Our intuition was the best way to manage noise and enhance speech in cacophony is to do the way the brain does it.
• 4:27
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Human brain has an amazing ability to help you hear in noisy environments when your brain is healthy.
• 4:32
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And while the traditional hearing aids focused on amplifying sound, yes, power frequency channels as analyzed by their traditional DSPs, Genesis was the first product where we had an integrated deep neural network.
• 4:48
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Pretty much you can think about borrowing uh a chunk of human brain and putting it into uh turning into an artificial brain and putting it into the hearing aid to have it suppress noise and enhance speech the way human brain does.
• 5:02
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: That had an amazing impact in expanding the signal-to-noise ratio, helping people hear better.
• 5:07
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: We didn't stop there.
• 5:08
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: We looked at what else does the brain do?
• 5:10
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Well, brain manages an amazing directional system and special awareness.
• 5:16
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: It not only allows me to focus on you when I'm in a noisy environment, it allows me to be aware of 360 degrees around me.
• 5:24
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So we developed two deep neural networks, one that drove a predictive directional system, performing better than any traditional directional systems that have been in our industry for decades, and then an amazing special awareness system so people can be aware of everything that's going around them.
• 5:41
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Those are three DNNs we had in Omega AI.
• 5:43
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Well, the exciting news we have for your patients and audience is that we have now replicated the brain's ability to do loudness mapping and gain control by throwing out the old ways of doing compression in hearing aids and for the first time in our industry, having a deep neural network-powered dual compression scheme.
• 6:06
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: That I'm going to elaborate more, but let me first pass it off to Sara to hear her excitement about what the G4 neuroprocessor-driven signal processing is having on the clinical research side of things, hearing from our patients.
• 6:20
  Dr. Sara Burdak: I think that's such an important question because we always talk about as a team, and we've all worked together for many years, that we have to take something from theory and our big ideas, and how is it going to function and perform on the patient's ear?
• 6:38
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Because we say we don't win unless this does get successfully fit with the best possible outcomes for every single patient.
• 6:47
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And that starts with our clinical trials and all of the research that we're doing to find the proof points to make sure that it's meeting our expectations and beyond.
• 7:00
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And with that, we did five clinical studies for Omega AI+, which is significant.
• 7:07
  Dr. Sara Burdak: We prior to release had 30,000 in-field wear hours.
• 7:14
  Dr. Dave Fabry: 30,000.
• 7:15
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And so we know that it's hitting the mark.
• 7:19
  Dr. Sara Burdak: It is making a meaningful difference.
• 7:22
  Dr. Sara Burdak: We're confident when we look at all the measurements that we have that we are preserving speech, that we are enhancing speech.
• 7:30
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Importantly, all of our data is showing that we're reducing listening effort.
• 7:36
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And I love the data points that we have that are showing it in the more complex environments.
• 7:43
  Dr. Sara Burdak: When we're talking about complex environments, it was specific to restaurant and hearing and noise and understanding conversational speech.
• 7:54
  Dr. Sara Burdak: It was really getting into how are we performing better in group conversations.
• 8:01
  Dr. Sara Burdak: All of those improvements were statistically significant in what we're seeing with Omega AI+.
• 8:09
  Dr. Sara Burdak: So that's what excites me is we are seeing really a leap again when we're talking about this evolution to intelligent systems.
• 8:21
  Dr. Sara Burdak: We're there with Omega AI+.
• 8:24
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, and I love having both of you on to be able to talk about the technology and the results, the clinical results, and how that directly impacts the patient.
• 8:32
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Because ultimately, we always place, since the company's been founded by Mr.
• 8:36
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Austin in 1967, patient is always the first consideration.
• 8:42
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And he's always our toughest critic in terms of when he has the opportunity to get his hands on this.
• 8:46
  Dr. Dave Fabry: The clinical studies are fantastic, but Bill is our toughest customer right out of the gate.
• 8:51
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And I think because of that, always keeping this patient at the center of all of this, when we talk about plus, we're focused on the needs that have been relatively constant for more than a decade among patients in general, and that is sound quality.
• 9:05
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We manage that with the speech, the SPP algorithm that's always trying to make speech audible and comfortable.
• 9:11
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And then we talk, you talked about directional microphones as really addressing what is often the number one concern that patients have is how well will they understand speech in noise, but in our case, ensuring that we're not compromising spatial awareness.
• 9:27
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And then the last piece, the fourth piece that you discussed with compression, and I want you to go into the technical background of that a little bit more, is that we can ensure that we're using as much of the patient's residual dynamic range as possible in every environment without ever having loud sounds become uncomfortable when they're not for someone without hearing loss.
• 9:48
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So please elaborate on the new element of using the DNN-trained compression algorithm, dual compression algorithm.
• 9:55
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Thank you, Dave, for setting this up.
• 9:56
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Uh perfect context for me to be specific about the question where you started on in what ways is omega AI Plus better than omega AI in an advanced product.
• 10:08
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So I would go into four different topics.
• 10:11
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: But first, uh let me introduce what you call the quad DNN architecture.
• 10:19
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Because what we have is an ensemble of deep neural networks.
• 10:24
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And the way I explain this is that as we copy the human brain's processing of signals, well, the human brain, yes, it's a giant neural network, but it's actually not a single neural network.
• 10:38
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: The cerebral cortex of the human brain is an ensemble of neural networks at a high level.
• 10:44
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Yes, you have a visual cortex, auditory cortex.
• 10:47
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Fundamentally, the processing architecture is the same.
• 10:50
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Interconnected neurons that could be trained to perform a specific task.
• 10:55
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Within the auditory cortex itself, you have different neural networks that are tasked with different auditory processing assignments.
• 11:04
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Copying that, we have developed a quad DNN architecture.
• 11:08
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: One that is doing noise management and speech enhancement.
• 11:12
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: It's an improved version of what we had introduced with Genesis platform.
• 11:17
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Then you mentioned directionality.
• 11:19
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: We introduced industries first and only DNN-driven directionality system.
• 11:23
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And in parallel, DNN-driven special awareness system, what do you call DNN 360?
• 11:29
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Now we're in, as part of this quad DN architecture of Omega I, we have a substantially improved DNN 360, which is also now available in all of our products, from the RICs to the smallest customs.
• 11:42
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And here, I'll let Sara explain later, but the focus has always been about reducing the listening effort.
• 11:52
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And we have an amazing improvement in reducing the listening effort because of the improved DNN 360.
• 11:59
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: But let me now talk about the new uh part of the DNN of that core DNN architecture, which is industry's first DNN-driven compression system.
• 12:10
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Well, let me take your audience back to a little bit of the task at hand when you compress.
• 12:17
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: First of all, the natural world has this amazing, immense dynamic range of loudness.
• 12:24
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: From the softest whispers to the loud sounds in the environment, it's a large dynamic range.
• 12:30
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: For your patient, you have a narrower dynamic range available for processing.
• 12:36
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So the task of the compression system is to do mapping of the loudness from the wider range to the narrower range that's available for the for the patient.
• 12:45
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Well, in the classic systems, you have to always compromise because for slowly varying sounds, you want slower time constants, slower acting compression in order to not introduce artifacts.
• 13:00
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: But at the same time, if you do that, you lose speech intelligibility.
• 13:04
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So because speech is a dynamic, fast varying acoustic signal, it requires a fast acting with a smaller time constant uh algorithm in order to do the compression.
• 13:17
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So it always been a compromise.
• 13:20
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: With the DNN-driven compression, we actually looked at the brain's architecture on how the brain does that.
• 13:25
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: The brain is a dynamic system with multiple uh time constants, it deals with slowly adding sounds, and the moment it detects speech that you have to understand, it switches to turn on a fast-acting compression scheme.
• 13:38
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Well, our core DNA architectures, DNN-driven compressor does exactly the same.
• 13:43
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: We have an unprecedented recognition accuracy for speech.
• 13:48
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: In fact, in one of our lab studies, we've shown when non-speech is present where you want slowly varying uh time constants, 94% of the times we were accurate in detecting that.
• 14:01
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And when you had speech superimposed with other sounds, we are 92% accurate in picking up the speech.
• 14:09
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: These unprecedented level levels of DNN-driven ability to delineate the complexity of acoustic sounds is allows this DNN-driven dual compressor to accomplish both tasks at the same time, help you understand speech and reduce the artifacts.
• 14:25
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And I'll let Sara explain what he found in the studies of reduction of the artifacts.
• 14:30
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Well, that was remarkable because a hundred percent of the participants said they noticed a reduction in the artifacts.
• 14:38
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Well, how how how how amazing is that?
• 14:40
  Dr. Sara Burdak: 100%.
• 14:41
  Dr. Sara Burdak: I don't know.
• 14:42
  Dr. Sara Burdak: We always say, you know, 98, 99.
• 14:44
  Dr. Sara Burdak: It was a hundred percent of everyone who participated in our clinical trial who noticed that difference, which I think is really incredible.
• 14:53
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Well, the intuition from neuroscience and engineering is that we expected a um high translation into patient benefits because you know, we're just simply copying how the human brain does it.
• 15:03
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: That's the best computational system that we know of.
• 15:07
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So the engineer can hope to do is come close to how brain processes it.
• 15:12
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So as you throw out the traditional static compression system and have brain-inspired architecture for it, we expected good patient benefit, but 100%.
• 15:21
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Yeah, it's impressive.
• 15:22
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And I'd like to add that we're doing more with our dual compressor than ever before because we're also with Omega AI+ introducing our new feedback management system, which is very, very intelligent.
• 15:37
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And you both know we've been leading the way in feedback cancellation since destiny.
• 15:43
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Since destiny 2006, I believe.
• 15:47
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And we have been making improvements all along, but this is really more revolutionary.
• 15:53
  Dr. Sara Burdak: It's it's a big leap, as we say, and the dynamics of feedback have changed.
• 15:59
  Dr. Sara Burdak: I loved that you were talking about the differences in fast and slow and needing to really understand the envelope of speech versus noise, and how do we engage the right signal processing strategy for every moment in time?
• 16:17
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Well, if you think about the nuances of feedback, it can be very similar to that.
• 16:23
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And one of the areas that we wanted to really look at is industry-wide, there's some fairly large assumptions that feedback is always much more in the high frequencies or especially in the extreme high frequencies.
• 16:38
  Dr. Sara Burdak: So we not only wanted to take a closer look to all of the personal characteristics, how does the hearing aid fit in the ear?
• 16:47
  Dr. Sara Burdak: What are the vents?
• 16:48
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Uh, what are the prescriptive gain?
• 16:50
  Dr. Sara Burdak: What fitting formulas are you using?
• 16:53
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And be able to do a deeper dive there with our initialization process to say what is the feedback risk.
• 17:01
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Once we know that, then we're able to say, well, is this more broadly across the frequency spectrum?
• 17:10
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And we were looking at how do we have better logic for mid-frequencies?
• 17:17
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And I'm really pleased to say that we have a 21 dB difference in our feedback manager with omega AI Plus, especially targeting feedback in the mid-frequencies.
• 17:31
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Overall, the gain margin, which is the headroom you have before feedback with omega AI Plus is 11 dB.
• 17:39
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And then the number that really excites me probably the most is a 32 dB improvement in artifact at the onset of the fitting.
• 17:52
  Dr. Sara Burdak: So when I think about what our goal is, faster fittings, more accurate fittings, more successful patient outcomes, that translates into fewer uh feedback uh issues during the fitting and then well beyond once that individual patient leaves the office.
• 18:16
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And that applies to all Achan mentioned that uh now we have a complete family.
• 18:22
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So this is custom and standard devices.
• 18:24
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So that feedback margin, those improvements impact any hearing loss for any form factor that that a patient might choose in working with the professional to deliver those optimal results.
• 18:36
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And really, you you you alluded to destiny back in 2005-2006.
• 18:41
  Dr. Dave Fabry: That really set the course for um uh RIC-style devices to really take off because now you could go with a more powerful device with larger venting because you didn't have all the electroacoustics in the ear, but also still some people want small custom devices.
• 18:57
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And the benefits of the improvement and that continued improvement and all new improvement with the feedback canceller deliver that results for all power levels and all form factors.
• 19:08
  Dr. Sara Burdak: You can see I'm smiling so much here because of that.
• 19:11
  Dr. Sara Burdak: With Omega AI+, I love the fact that it is available across an entire family.
• 19:18
  Dr. Sara Burdak: There are nine styles, and that's so important because we all know if you have a patient in front of you as the professional, you want to be able to select whatever device and style and option that works best for them.
• 19:33
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And I'm so confident with having all of this in one family that the professional's able to do that.
• 19:39
  Dr. Dave Fabry: 100%.
• 19:40
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Yeah, and now I want to uh say a few words on the feedback cancellor.
• 19:44
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Yes.
• 19:44
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Yes, uh a lot of focus on signal processing, helping people hear better in noise.
• 19:49
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: But as you know, we have a lot of patients who require as much gain as you can provide them because they really need the help.
• 19:56
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And it's always been challenging for the industry to provide the gain while minimizing feedback.
• 20:01
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So this is a big leap in terms of all new feedback cancellar system and big jump in uh many generations of products that are going to be great.
• 20:09
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So, with that said, can we switch roles here?
• 20:12
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And uh can we hear from the chief hearing health officer about beyond hearing?
• 20:18
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: We've been working on tracking health with hearing aids.
• 20:23
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: These devices are the best place, as you said, uh wrist is not the best place.
• 20:28
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So here is not only the new wrist, it's better than the wrist.
• 20:31
  Dr. Dave Fabry: 100%.
• 20:32
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And we have focused on generation after generation, steadfast tracking, monitoring of health.
• 20:37
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So what's new here?
• 20:38
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Right.
• 20:38
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We uh, you know, I would say we've been certainly leading the market with that focus on health and wellness.
• 20:43
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And and part of this back in 2018, when we first introduced Livio AI, the first product that had AI tagged to it, it was because, again, job one, intelligent hearing, job two was this focus and emphasis on health and wellness.
• 20:58
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And in part at the start, it was to help reduce stigma and barriers to people thinking about hearing aids.
• 21:04
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But what we've also seen is we led the market, maybe even led the patient a little bit in this way, because it has taken until recently, only the latest market track surveys of 2025 have now shown that the baby boomer generation, my generation, is actually contributing to a significant reduction in the delay from the moment you think or suspect that you have a hearing loss to when you act by getting something with hearing aids.
• 21:31
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And I think a large part of that is as opposed to previous generations, we're less stigmatized, but we have higher expectations for what hearing aids can do.
• 21:39
  Dr. Dave Fabry: You guys will see as you get a little bit older, you'll you'll get that point.
• 21:42
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And we want to hear better, live better at every stage in life.
• 21:46
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And hearing, job one, but the health and wellness connection, we know that although many lay people think that hearing loss occurs in a vacuum, it doesn't.
• 21:54
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We've known for decades that cardiovascular disease and hearing loss have strong links.
• 21:59
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Cognition more recently.
• 22:02
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We've been focused since 2019 on introducing a fall detection circuit leading to which is still the only hitting it's only hearing a company that offers that.
• 22:12
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And we've heard countless stories from patients, providers, and their families about how it has provided both peace of mind and even not my words, their words, saved their life by having a family member who fell with their hearing aids on, connected to their smartphone, alerting one of those three trusted contacts.
• 22:29
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But from our perspective, it wasn't it it's a cool feature, and the industry's only feature in that focus.
• 22:34
  Dr. Dave Fabry: It's not enough.
• 22:35
  Dr. Dave Fabry: My mother uh uh fell, broke her hip, and although the fall didn't kill her, the the ultimate decline, uh spiral decline in her overall mental health, physical health led to her premature death due to the consequences of the fall.
• 22:51
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So, what our aim has been in partnership with uh a deep research collaboration that we have with Stanford has been to focus not only on fall uh alerts and detection, but uh fall risk assessment and even now balance building exercises and um looking at every way that we connect hearing health to overall health and wellness, falls, cognition, cardiovascular.
• 23:15
  Dr. Dave Fabry: What's next?
• 23:16
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So with omega snaps, with omega snaps.
• 23:18
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Womega AI, we had the ability to detect your respiratory rate.
• 23:23
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Can you imagine a hearing it that detects your respiration rate?
• 23:25
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Why is that important?
• 23:27
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Yep.
• 23:27
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Respiration rate, of course, it's one of the important physiological parameters, particularly for older patients that you want to track if it goes out of whack, you want to know it so you can uh you can address it.
• 23:37
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: But that's it.
• 23:38
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: What is new with OGI Plus?
• 23:41
  Dr. Dave Fabry: That respiration rate is critical.
• 23:42
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We knew that during the COVID years, which I hope we never go back to, respiration rate often varies if people start having respiratory effects uh due to an illness.
• 23:52
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Um, you know, this so this is like people start to ask, really?
• 23:55
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: A hearing aid can do that?
• 23:57
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Yes.
• 23:58
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So, in terms of what's next here, I've worked with patients for decades who've said, you know, they have significant loss, like like all three of us, they travel a lot and they worry in some cases that if they have a significant loss and they're in an unfamiliar area, that they might miss a smoke detector or some sort of knock on the door if there's an emergency in an unfamiliar environment.
• 24:20
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So if they could only wear their hearing aids at night, and what other things that we could track.
• 24:26
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Now, do you feel, do each of you feel like you got a good night's sleep last night?
• 24:30
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Well, I would like to know.
• 24:32
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, right because you don't really know sometimes.
• 24:35
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And then, you know, what's important?
• 24:36
  Dr. Sara Burdak: I feel like I don't, but maybe I did.
• 24:38
  Dr. Sara Burdak: But you guessed.
• 24:40
  Dr. Sara Burdak: I guess.
• 24:41
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: I guess.
• 24:42
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: You know, our job as engineers is to translate the guesswork into quantifications.
• 24:47
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Quantified self.
• 24:48
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: I want to know if I slept well.
• 24:50
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I am the I am the definition of the world.
• 24:52
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Can the hearing edge do that?
• 24:53
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Can the hearing eds actually track that?
• 24:55
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So not only can they do it, we're the only, not only a risk-warrant device, but the only device that can monitor the duration of sleep, which is important, but it's also not the only thing.
• 25:07
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We need to know how restless you are while sleeping.
• 25:10
  Dr. Dave Fabry: In many cases, connecting to that respiratory rate that we can already do for people that want to wear their devices for alerting purposes, but also monitoring the amount of sleep and whether they're sleeping on their back or their side or their left side or their right side.
• 25:24
  Dr. Dave Fabry: There are differences and preferred sides, if you're a side sleeper, that tie to elevated risk of uh requirement for needing a CPAP machine.
• 25:35
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Well, there you go, we we slipped in, right?
• 25:36
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So omega I plus is the first hearing aid that tracks your sleep.
• 25:41
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So this is the big news in in health tracking technology.
• 25:44
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And it's not going to be.
• 25:45
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: By the way, no other device that I use for in a wristwatch and everything else knows which side you're sleeping on.
• 25:51
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: You have to go to a sleep lab and get instrumented with all kinds of paraphernalia of sensors for you to get a sense of which sides are you sleeping, which is important to track for many patients.
• 26:01
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And omega I plus is the devices that will be able to not only track the quality of sleep, but also what side you slept on.
• 26:08
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Exactly.
• 26:09
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And it's the extension of brain care.
• 26:11
  Dr. Sara Burdak: When you think of the evolution of what we've been talking about already, you started with the fact that we're thinking about how do you model neural networks like the brain.
• 26:22
  Dr. Sara Burdak: We want to have the most natural sound quality and processing possible in our hearing aids.
• 26:28
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Then we look at, well, hearing care is brain care.
• 26:32
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And we know, I love the fact that you were talking about we have so many proven points today, because not that long ago we were really questioning if you had a hearing loss and you didn't take action soon enough.
• 26:46
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Were there really associations with all of these chronic comorbidities?
• 26:51
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And we know the answer to that.
• 26:53
  Dr. Sara Burdak: So, in all of the literature, we still see that sleep is part of brain care as well.
• 26:59
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And it helps your body on so many levels to function at its best.
• 27:05
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And I think it's really fantastic then that we've been able to get that implemented in unique ways.
• 27:12
  Dr. Sara Burdak: I think that's traditional to Starkey.
• 27:14
  Dr. Sara Burdak: When we put something in the technology, oftentimes we think what's one step better above and beyond than what's already out there today.
• 27:25
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And the sleep tracking feature is one of those examples.
• 27:29
  Dr. Dave Fabry: It may not be for everyone, but we know that sleep specialists and primary care docs recommend in the US that you get about seven hours of sleep, and about 30% of us are under that.
• 27:41
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And so the ability to monitor, coach, and motivate yourself to try to, in the same way that I always try to reserve time for exercise every day, brain health is contingent on getting a good night's sleep, and all of us think, oh, well, I can get by on four or five hours.
• 27:57
  Dr. Dave Fabry: None of us can get by as well as we think we can.
• 28:01
  Dr. Sara Burdak: I've seen both of you do that.
• 28:03
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Yeah.
• 28:04
  Dr. Sara Burdak: We've traveled a lot together.
• 28:06
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Yeah.
• 28:06
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Yeah.
• 28:07
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Maybe something like that.
• 28:07
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And we've tried, right?
• 28:08
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Especially international trail.
• 28:11
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, when you're dealing with jet lag, and on top of that.
• 28:13
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So it's a really another piece on that health and wellness component.
• 28:18
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And important to highlight what you said, it's not for everyone.
• 28:21
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: No, we don't want everybody to start stepping in their hearing aids, they're not charge their hearing aids.
• 28:24
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: But how I've seen Just like fault detection is not for everybody.
• 28:26
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: I'm not worried about falling yet, but my dad is.
• 28:29
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So going back to Mr.
• 28:31
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Austin, if you saved one human life, that's what all of the investment and hard work that we're doing, we want to help people live healthier as well as as they're hearing better with our products.
• 28:43
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And if we can be an early warning indicator for sleep apnea by looking at the quality of sleep and respiration rate throughout the day as well.
• 28:51
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Um to me, that's a big advantage again, because we're we're pulling in health and wellness, connecting it to hearing, raising awareness for the importance of hearing as a vital human sense.
• 29:03
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And hearing care is healthcare.
• 29:05
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And we've been focused on that longer than any of our competitors in this industry.
• 29:08
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Also, that's the health.
• 29:09
  Dr. Dave Fabry: That's the health care.
• 29:10
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: You mentioned three strong strategies hear better, track health, and intelligent assistant.
• 29:17
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Yes.
• 29:17
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So this is a relentless march to make the hearing aid smarter and smarter with AI technology.
• 29:23
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: We have introduced already Starkey Assistant, where you can simply talk to your devices to control it, you can ask questions, you can help it remind you of important tasks, medications, and all of that.
• 29:36
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: With Omega I Plus, yes, we're taking another step forward.
• 29:39
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: If you leave your hearing aids behind, you want to be alerted, your assistant needs to be able to tell you, yes, you left your hearing aids behind.
• 29:47
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: You don't want to go somewhere without your devices, you want to go and collect it.
• 29:52
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: This is another step towards making hearing aids intelligent so that it can be it can proactively alert you on things that you need.
• 29:59
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And I think that's a particularly important point for new hearing aid users.
• 30:04
  Dr. Dave Fabry: First-time hearing aid users, I've often said we think about it clinically, you know, I'm going through the audiologic information, the lifestyle information, the verification and fitting and rehabilitation.
• 30:16
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But for me, it's part of my job to work with them.
• 30:19
  Dr. Dave Fabry: For the patient, first-time hearing aid user, it can be a full-time job.
• 30:23
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And it's overwhelming for them.
• 30:25
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And they may, when they're getting acclimating use to the use of their hearing aids, they may want to take them out and set them down for a little bit.
• 30:31
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And that reminder that you left your hearing aids behind, to me, really helps streamline that acclimatization process.
• 30:39
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I don't know your thoughts on this.
• 30:40
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Well, I've been a huge advocate for years because my mom had dementia and she's no longer here.
• 30:47
  Dr. Sara Burdak: But that was one of the biggest challenges.
• 30:49
  Dr. Sara Burdak: I think even from a caregiver perspective, to be my able to monitor someone's devices, that was happening more regularly than you might think.
• 31:00
  Dr. Sara Burdak: So I agree from a new user perspective, but even from really trying to look out for somebody or where you know are these devices.
• 31:10
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And I just walked away for a minute, and you know, so often they'll say, Oh, I forgot my ears.
• 31:16
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And I love that statement because it's true, they've they forgot these incredible devices that are going to be helping them to hear better and live better.
• 31:24
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 31:24
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, it's a gr it's a great feature in that third uh uh intelligent assistant category.
• 31:30
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And you you talked about reminders, and I think it shouldn't go uh without saying that um 40 to 50 percent of elderly patients are on some sort of uh uh prescriptive medication, and in many cases they're taking uh that medication multiple times throughout the day, and it becomes really easy to forget.
• 31:50
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And so noncompliance is a significant issue.
• 31:54
  Dr. Dave Fabry: That subtle reminder that they get a lot of people.
• 31:56
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Well, you're talking about the older patients.
• 31:58
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Uh yeah, a young friend of mine in in his late 40s, he uses the reminder feature, because he uses our hearing aids, to help him remind which day is his turn to pick up his daughter from school at 5 p.m.
• 32:09
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So this reminder, everybody needs to be reminded.
• 32:12
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And if you have your device in your ear all the time, what's a better tool than your hearing devices that will remind you of your tasks?
• 32:19
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Exactly.
• 32:20
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Well, I certainly can use it.
• 32:22
  Dr. Sara Burdak: How often are how often are you in a meeting and you missed your phone pop-up and rather have it just tell me that I have to uh go to the next meeting?
• 32:33
  Dr. Sara Burdak: It's your intelligent assistant up there.
• 32:34
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Yes, I think we can certainly all benefit from these tools that we have.
• 32:39
  Dr. Dave Fabry: 100%.
• 32:39
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And you know, we've talked about G4 of the neuroprocessor, Omega AI+, with all of the additional DNN capabilities of adding that quad four, now adding the compression in into the DNN algorithm.
• 32:52
  Dr. Dave Fabry: What kind of compromise, and then we're talking about sleep.
• 32:54
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So now a patient's gonna think about wearing their hearing aids at night.
• 32:57
  Dr. Dave Fabry: What kind of compromise did that involve with regards to battery life?
• 33:01
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Thank you for asking that question.
• 33:02
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So um it's for engineers building a product.
• 33:06
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: It would be too easy, everybody could do it, if we just simply added features and drained energy from the batteries, reducing the battery life.
• 33:15
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So at Starkey, we have developed a generational platform that allows us to do highly energy efficient computing.
• 33:23
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So brain-like computation, while the brain does this all these amazing tasks from vision, hearing to help us understand the world and navigate in it, it only consumes 20 watts of power.
• 33:37
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: That's one fifth of a light bulb.
• 33:38
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: One of the benefits we have of fully integrated deep neural network in the main processor is that our signal processing is extremely energy efficient because we're borrowing the way brain does energy efficient computing.
• 33:52
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: No compromises on battery life.
• 33:54
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: In fact, by adding an additional deep neural network processing for compression, we are not reducing the battery life at all because it is all our DNN systems have always been on in the main audio path.
• 34:05
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Always on.
• 34:05
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And so, with that, you know, without comp you know, for the longest time, patients will say, well, what is the best hearing aid?
• 34:11
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And aside from saying omega AI plus, put a plug in.
• 34:14
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Um I also say the ones that are worn.
• 34:17
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And so if we're talking about something that patients could occasionally or always wear when sleeping, they need to have and and have the peace of mind to ensure that they're not going to run out of battery, range anxiety.
• 34:28
  Dr. Dave Fabry: They also need to ensure that the devices are bulletproof in the real world.
• 34:34
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So, Sara, can you talk about you talked about that full featured family?
• 34:38
  Dr. Dave Fabry: What impact does that have in terms of ingress protection for these people?
• 34:42
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Yeah, I think that's so important.
• 34:43
  Dr. Sara Burdak: I always say devices worn and working.
• 34:47
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yes.
• 34:47
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Has to be both, and they go hand in hand.
• 34:50
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And we've had just fantastic quality improvements that have been also really fun to talk about.
• 34:58
  Dr. Sara Burdak: But the fact that our rechargeable products are all waterproof, I think that's significant.
• 35:03
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Achin already mentioned the battery.
• 35:05
  Dr. Dave Fabry: It's IP68.
• 35:06
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Yes, IP68.
• 35:08
  Dr. Sara Burdak: The battery performance is really incredible.
• 35:11
  Dr. Sara Burdak: So the other piece that I want to call out, we've had a big conversation about how this is one family, but nobody does custom product fittings as comfortably and as small as what we do at Starkey.
• 35:28
  Dr. Sara Burdak: I kind of laugh because I'll tell people, gosh, if you're not getting a custom product through Starkey, that's just absolutely ridiculous.
• 35:35
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Because I feel so strongly about it.
• 35:37
  Dr. Sara Burdak: So being comfortable on the ear, being ergonomically designed to be worn all day, every day is something that we have to think differently about compared to consumer electronic devices.
• 35:51
  Dr. Sara Burdak: We want somebody to be able to wear these comfortably.
• 35:54
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Well, those days, I remember my early days uh in the hearing aid industry where if you forgetfully walked into a shower with your hearing aids dead.
• 36:01
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: How about waterproof?
• 36:03
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Yes.
• 36:03
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: I mean, Omega I Plus is waterproof.
• 36:05
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, we're not saying go out and and swim trazzes back with them.
• 36:10
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Uh but if you jump in the pool, you jump in the shower, they'll be fine.
• 36:13
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Dry it off, they'll be just fine.
• 36:14
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: They're gonna be good.
• 36:15
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: You know, we have I don't know if I should uh say it publicly, maybe I should.
• 36:20
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: We have historically low uh repair rates and return rates with these hearing aids because it's just so robust.
• 36:26
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Yes.
• 36:26
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: You want to rely on your technology so it won't break.
• 36:30
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Right.
• 36:30
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So we we've got the technology in terms of that quad DNN with Omega AI+.
• 36:35
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We're focused on better hearing.
• 36:37
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And I do I do want to come back to you for a minute with the Sanacha.
• 36:39
  Dr. Dave Fabry: People will say, well, my devices have adaptive uh uh uh adaptive beam forming.
• 36:45
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And so I think one of the critical aspects that we need to convey with the quad DNN approach is that we're really uh it feels in part, and Sara, you've been around a few years too, thinking about the battle of the bands and people just saying, oh, it newer is better always, but with keeping the patient at the center of this and with really thinking about directionality without compromising the other things that patients want, that sound quality, the localization and spatial awareness, the the comfort for sounds.
• 37:16
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Talk a little bit about that for people that say, oh, well, adaptive directionality that can do do every bit as good because again, keep in mind we've had inertial measurement units in our products since 2018.
• 37:26
  Dr. Dave Fabry: What does that do?
• 37:27
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: I would say so.
• 37:27
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Let me start with the key insight.
• 37:29
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: The key insight is a highly dynamic system.
• 37:31
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: You know, again, go back to the the way a healthy human brain understands sound.
• 37:37
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: It's a highly dynamic system.
• 37:39
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So if so nothing wrong with the progression the industry has had through multiple steps of you know having this system and then add something else, next generation add something else.
• 37:49
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: But the neural network-based approach it allows you to be fully dynamic, responding almost predictably to changing acoustic environment.
• 37:58
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So if you were in a specific environment where all I care about is listening to you and that's it.
• 38:04
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Maybe a particular directional system is good enough.
• 38:08
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: But then life is varied.
• 38:10
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: We need a dynamic system, which is what brain does.
• 38:14
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So you want a system that's not only allowing me to listen to you in a noisy cacophony, but be specially aware at the same time there's an important event that happens.
• 38:23
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: I want to know that.
• 38:24
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So the only way to deliver that is through called DNN 360, but really multiple DNN systems running in parallel in processing the and responding to dynamically changing acoustic environment that does not compromise, gives you the best directionality that you need, at the same time allows you to be uh specially aware to DNN 360.
• 38:48
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And always on.
• 38:49
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And then the compression needs to run on parallel to that because it's the world of loudness mapping and gain control dynamically, responding to different types of acoustic signals promptly.
• 38:59
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: So I'm so excited that in the effort to do brain-like competition, we are going deeper and deeper in the layers of learning from neuroscience, translating that into process processor technology.
• 39:13
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yes, and each generation becomes more brain-like in terms of that, and it's on all the time.
• 39:19
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And and Sara, maybe you can comment.
• 39:21
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We we do have a new paper that was just published in uh September looking at some of those situations and comparing to either legacy directional microphone systems or omnidirectional microphone systems, and the way that DNN 360 um with quad DNN is always active dynamically so that if I'm concentrating on something and someone comes up behind me, and if I'm in a directional mode or a device that's cutting down and reducing sounds from behind me, someone comes up and calls my name, I'm gonna miss the first part of that.
• 39:51
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We don't have that happening.
• 39:53
  Dr. Sara Burdak: We don't.
• 39:53
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And then I'd like to get into something we haven't really talked about.
• 39:57
  Dr. Sara Burdak: The added layer in all of this with edge mode, I think is so critical.
• 40:03
  Dr. Sara Burdak: The win here to me is because it's always on and always automatic.
• 40:10
  Dr. Sara Burdak: The data has shown that people don't need a bunch of other memories anymore.
• 40:17
  Dr. Sara Burdak: That they are finding even to their personal program that they have in the device with all of these tools, with DNN 360, with edge mode allowing them to choose what their focus is, if it's speech or if they want comfort, that that preference is significantly higher when edge mode is engaged over their personal memory.
• 40:45
  Dr. Sara Burdak: So the reason I said that's a win is I have been around a long time too, where we used to have hearing aids with eight different memories.
• 40:56
  Dr. Sara Burdak: How complicated for a patient to know that.
• 41:01
  Dr. Sara Burdak: We are seeing they are not having to make adjustments.
• 41:05
  Dr. Sara Burdak: The professional is able to fit them faster because they're not needing all of these different memories that they have to train the patient on to engage and manually adjust.
• 41:17
  Dr. Sara Burdak: To me, when the technology works that seamlessly and isn't in the way, that's really the best outcome from Omega AI+.
• 41:28
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And I should take the opportunity to uh tell the audience that edge mode with Omega AI+ is a substantially improved version of the edge mode we had for generations.
• 41:39
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Retrained with Richard dataset, architecturally improved, and just a substantial improvement in delivering better hearing with the user intent in mind.
• 41:49
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: At your fingertips.
• 41:51
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, and and I I both of you have just made such important points with regards to DNN 360, it's always on when we put the patient at the center of this.
• 42:00
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We're saying that we want every patient persona, because I've got some patients, as you know, I still work with patients, some patients that just want to put them devices in their ears, set it and forget it, and have it automatically go throughout their day.
• 42:12
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I also work with a lot of engineers, uh CTOs, people that are very technically minded.
• 42:18
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I know.
• 42:19
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And and so the issue is they want to get under the hood, but but you're absolutely right, Sara.
• 42:24
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Over the last couple uh product cycles, I've been moving away from professional programs.
• 42:31
  Dr. Dave Fabry: You know, in the past I would always go to a restaurant and a and a crowd program, instruct them to use them when they got into a restaurant or a crowd.
• 42:38
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Patients would come back and say, Well, yeah, a restaurant is better, but it's a restaurant, but it's not my restaurant.
• 42:45
  Dr. Dave Fabry: You know, they sit in a certain spot or the acoustics are different.
• 42:48
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And edge mode is the easy button, whether it's for a soft-spoken person or a noisy environment, customizes, personalizes to that environment.
• 42:57
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So I'm finding that even those technophiles are more comfortable having personal plus edge mode to satisfy all of their situational environments.
• 43:08
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And then they can play with the health and wellness features and quantify themselves and the smart assistant.
• 43:14
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But we're we're really putting every patient at the center of this.
• 43:17
  Dr. Dave Fabry: It shouldn't be a worry that our most advanced products are only for their most advanced patients.
• 43:23
  Dr. Dave Fabry: This does work for the set it and forget it and the PhD engineer.
• 43:28
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And that's true.
• 43:28
  Dr. Sara Burdak: We saw that in the clinical trials.
• 43:30
  Dr. Sara Burdak: Certainly we saw individuals who had more significant hearing loss did receive more benefit with edge mode, which one would expect.
• 43:39
  Dr. Sara Burdak: But we also saw those that were willing to engage and consider AI and DNN, which was the vast majority.
• 43:49
  Dr. Sara Burdak: And I think that's a significant learning as we have to assume these individuals are thinking of AI and their technology and they want it.
• 44:02
  Dr. Sara Burdak: They even noticed more of a difference.
• 44:04
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, great.
• 44:05
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Well, we back it with data, and then also clinicians who try this product, I think will also see this with their patients.
• 44:12
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So that was quite a sprint.
• 44:14
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Uh, we've covered a lot of ground in a short time.
• 44:17
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I'm so appreciative to have both of you here in one setting to go through all of the technical, clinical, and evidence-based research advantages of Omega AI+.
• 44:28
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Now the fun begins.
• 44:30
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We've put in all of the work in getting the product ready, validating, verifying, meeting the regulatory requirements, and now it's up to professionals to see how this fits into their uh clinical practice and then see what their patients think.
• 44:45
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But I think they're going to be as excited as both of you are uh at unpacking this today.
• 44:50
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Well, I'll say uh it's a significant step forward in our relentless journey to deliver superhuman hearing for people.
• 44:57
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Our journey towards turning hearing aids into your early warning system for your health.
• 45:04
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: We are another step forward on that.
• 45:06
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And intelligent assistant, the device is with you, but remove the stigma.
• 45:11
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: And our goal is that hearing a loss or not, mild hearing loss, you will want to use these devices.
• 45:17
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: Just like me.
• 45:18
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: I don't have hearing loss, as you know, and your patients, your audience knows.
• 45:21
  Achin Bhowmik, PhD: But I cannot live without my hearing aids because they help me with superhuman hearing and help me with my health and my assistant.
• 45:29
  Dr. Dave Fabry: You're better, live better.
• 45:30
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And uh, Sara, thank you as well for the work that you've done to deliver this product.
• 45:35
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And thanks for being here today uh to our uh our viewers.
• 45:39
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Thank you for tuning into this episode.
• 45:40
  Dr. Dave Fabry: If you like it, please subscribe, share with your friends, share with prospective patients uh and who are more techie minded and want to take a deeper dive as we have here.
• 45:51
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Otherwise, uh thank you both for being here and look forward to seeing you uh hopefully with our our our uh uh veteran jackets next time.
• 45:59
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And uh uh we'll look forward to hearing from you and seeing you soon.
• 46:03
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Thank you very much.