From Lab to Launch by Qualio

Programming Humanity into AI to Improve Clinical Trials with Chuck Rinker CEO of PRSONAS

February 28, 2023 Qualio & Chuck Rinker Episode 72
From Lab to Launch by Qualio
Programming Humanity into AI to Improve Clinical Trials with Chuck Rinker CEO of PRSONAS
Show Notes Transcript

Chuck Rinker, CEO of PRSONAS, a self-proclaimed Human-AI Innovator, joins the podcast to discuss programming humanity into AI and revolutionizing the clinical trial industry through their iHealthAssist product. 

Chuck has gone from developing black-ops military tech and NASA/space-borne avionics through gaming to the creation of nuMedia Innovations and the patented technologies behind it including the Digital Personality Engine that brings human engagement to self-service solutions for airports, hospitals, and commercial markets. Listen how this applies to the healthcare and life science industries.

https://www.prsonas.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckrinker/

More about Chuck
My professional career has taken me from developing black-ops military tech and NASA/space-borne avionics through gaming, including directing the NCAA / Madden series of games for EA Sports. This lead to the creation of nuMedia Innovations and the patented technologies behind it. Our premier offering is the PRSONAS™ Digital Personality Engine bringing human engagement to self-service solutions for airports, hospitals, and commercial markets.

About PRSONAS
Since inception, the team at PRSONAS have worked passionately to implement their vision of a digital workforce - empowering companies and organizations to automate the mundane, freeing time for human innovation. Leading international innovators such as Google for Entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley Open Doors, and FGNoviteiten Juryprijs have recognized us for our efforts.

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Music by keldez

Kelly Stanton:

Hello and welcome to From Lab to Launch by Qualio. Glad you're tuning in today. I'm Kelly, your host, and I'm really excited to, uh, to share today's guest with you. Before we jump in, just a reminder to please rate the show and share it with any of your science nerd friends. We know you have. Also check out the show notes if you have a story or a product you'd like to share with us. All right, so today we're talking to Chuck Rinker, CEO of PRSONAS and a self-proclaimed human AI innovator. Chuck and his team at PRSONAS are programming humanity into AI and revolutionizing the clinical trial industry through their iHealth assist product. There's more about Chuck in the show notes, but at a high level, he's gone from developing black ops, military tech, and NASA space, born avionics through gaming, to the creation of new media innovations and the patented technologies behind it, including the digital personality engine that brings human engagement to self-service solutions for airports, hospitals, and commercial markets. We'll jump into how this applies to the healthcare and life science industry now. Chuck, thanks for joining us. Um, can you give us a quick overview of your background, uh, black Ops military tech? How, how is that, uh, how are you bringing that into life sciences?

Chuck Rinker:

Yeah, I mean, I'm, I've been lucky enough and I appreciate you having me on and, and letting, uh, speak a little bit about what I've had a passion for what seems like unrelated disciplines over the decades. But, um, going from cattle farmer to human AI expert is a, is a big leap. I understand. Um, but the black ops piece all the way through the gaming and all really had settled in on what, how, how do humans engage with each other? How do we communicate? Not at a top level of what language you understand or how you speak, but really the gesture, communications, the subtle and uh, um, um, intensity of our voice when we get frustrated or the happiness in the latest. There's a lot of communications inside of humans that makes us engage with certain. Technologies, and I was lucky enough to get through the heavy tech world of the Black Ops as you saw there, so I appreciate you mentioning that. But really landing into something, um, um, that was much more, uh, uh, personal and deep, which was the gaming industry. And I learned pretty quickly at EA Sports. I, I handled the Madden and NCAA football franchises for EA sports for a while.

Kelly Stanton:

Oh, it's my son's favorite game.

Chuck Rinker:

Oh, if Well, I always tell people, you know, if you're, if it causes problems at home, I apologize.

Kelly Stanton:

No, he's pretty reasonable. But yeah, that Madden game and, and every year he's like, mom, I need the new one. I, I need the new one.

Chuck Rinker:

Absolutely. it's in the game. It's in the. but, but actually you, you jumped right in on a point, Kelly, that, that's instrumental in what persona is those kids and adults. Quite honestly, people don't realize probably 40 to 45% of the gaming community are over 30 years old. Um, um, it's, it's a social gamers and the old people like me that sit around and play games for, for fun as a release, as a, um, um, you know, escape from escapism. And such as we get into this sense of, uh, uh, uh, what we call suspension of disbelief in the, in the gaming world, which is you believe the environment you're in. And when you talked about that engagement with your, um, own, own children as my, my children are pretty much addicted to games as well, and I, I should use the word addicted in healthcare, but let's say, uh, definitely motivated to play again. Definitely

Kelly Stanton:

motivated. It is certainly their primary. Play these days. Yes.

Chuck Rinker:

So we traded PRSONAS to bring that same level of motivation and engagement to industries outside of Bean and one of those industries that struck a chord. And we can get into the personal reasons between, you know, multiple family members with. Either some dependencies or cancer and all kinds of health issues. It got me thinking we're creating this personality engine and we know how to capture gaming community, and we've been applying PRSONAS towards retail, um, financial services businesses. It's kind of a way to scale up digital workplace, uh, workplace. But what if we could do something at a bigger meaning, a bigger purpose? What if we could get people motivated and quite honest, I'm gonna use it outta context. If we could get you addicted to being he. Addicted to better outcomes in your clinical trials. Addicted to improving overall wellness in the same way that we get motivated, as we say, to play that game an hour a day, or two hours a day. That's the power we're trying to bring, uh, uh, to the healthcare in, in industry. So, so that's kind of a connection of the dots between cattle farmer to tech head to, um, um, gamer to now, uh, creating a digital personality platform and ultimately trying to do something bigger with it, which is in the healthcare

Kelly Stanton:

sector. That's exciting. Um, I love, I love the connections there too. I think people don't realize how. Interconnected and related. All of these things actually

Chuck Rinker:

are, you are 110% correct,

Kelly Stanton:

so tell us how iHealth assist works then How will that shape the future of the clinical trial

Chuck Rinker:

industry? We believe there's, there's really three phases, or I always shouldn't say phase cuz I'll confuse those that are more adept at clinical trial work than I, we've done probably about 15 or 20 clinical trials so far, and the more I do, the more I learn, but specifically how we're applying this is within the outcomes data. Historically speaking. There's been a, um, the outcomes are based on, as you said, as you know, probably multi-faced clinical trials. How do you get people recruited into that trial? How do you make sure they understand what they're getting into the consent process and get'em approved, and then how do you keep'em through that trial, that retention? You gotta finish your trial or the date is no good. And historically speaking, clinical trials have been, uh, grossly swayed, um, by the demographics that you're able to attract to. There's a, there's a big trust factor in clinical trials where, um, if you're doing a clinical trial, we're currently working with our R T I on a, um, OBO trial, which is, um, opioid addicted, uh, uh, young parents and what the impact that has on the off front on the children and their lives. And if you think about the stigma and the trust of having someone that's underprivileged, um, has the stigma of being addicted to an opioid and then having to try to become a participant in this big healthcare system that those communities have a history of not trusting for, for sometimes valid reasons. How do you, how do you bridge that? We can't just always have clinical trials that are taking the part, pardon the politically incorrect statement, that the, you know, the, um, middle-aged white guys and make your clinical trials outcome data based on that demographic. So the ideal with PRSONAS is to create approachable, trustworthy digital personalities. And I'll separate digital humans for a reason. We'll get into it in. Um, from that stigma. So there's a lot of studies, especially from the gaming world, um, where when you engage with an avatar, you engage with a digital personality, you engage with a gaming character, for lack of a better term, you don't have that. They're not judging you. You get that sense. You're not being judged. There's no personal stigma associated with it, and that character can be designed for the demographic of the study. So when you're thinking about recruit, If you're looking at a young female Hispanic population versus an elderly, um, there's a, uh, group up in, uh, Northwest Pacific, um, that has a language called mixed teta, and it's a whole population. How do you reach a demographic like them who, um, only speaks a certain language in those languages aren't common language. We actually taught PRSONAS on a side note to speak mixed. So she, oh, nice. She would greet the, um, um, attendees at Columbia Health Base in, at MX Teca. But how do you create that personality that becomes trusting, empathetic, and non-judgmental? That's the recruitment and consent process that we think about. Um, to finish the thought on the retention is, as, as someone with a gaming kid, you'll, uh, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll make this league pretty quickly, Um, how do you keep people in a trial longer? Well, you know what? You give them a, you give them someone they can call and someone they understand that same person that helped recruit them creates that trusted bond with them. There's emotional connection. The same reason why US Disney fanatics will buy anything as long as it's got a Mickey head on it. We have an emotional connection to that. So if you can build that emotional connection in the recruitment consent process. You have a higher probability of letting that digital personality, that let's say you've, you've picked the, the female Hispanic character cuz you identify with that character more and you feel safer with that character. That's the character that's gonna lead you through the remaining portions of the trial. And the hope there and belief there is that, um, they will help that engagement maintain for compliancy. Are you doing the right exercises? Are you sticking to the regimen you're supposed to? What are the physical follow up, follow ups and uh, pieces? And then outside of all that, the obvious final question is, our final statement is, well, by using conversational ai, you're eliminating the technical hurdles and you're basically able to scale the reach of your human, uh, uh, trial managers and trial volunteers a lot of times, and trial, um, um, professionals or healthcare professionals. By using some of these automated tools that people talk about, chatbots and Siri and all that, but how do you do that with the engagement piece? That's part of the scalability that comes into play. Sorry, that was a long-winded answer,

Kelly Stanton:

but No, no, it was great. And it was interesting that the first place you went to was trust because my next question was about, you know, distrust of ai, distrust of computers. How are you, how are you addressing those kinds of issues?

Chuck Rinker:

Uh, you're throwing me softballs Kelly. This is awesome. The reason I say this is cause the number one thing I've had to defend in the, we've been doing this since 2013, quite. And it's just now starting to get market acceptance and market visibility. So again, thanks for allow, allowing me to rant a little bit about something I've been passionate about for the last almost 10 years. Um, but the trust factor comes in. Where, um, a lot of companies, and I don't wanna pick on my competitors, there's a lot of amazing work out there. You don't trust AI because it's obviously ai. Um, and I say that jokingly, but half seriously. You think that there's a computer out there making conscious decisions, and the number one thing I defend is, Hey, you're just trying to replace humans. You're just trying to replace humans. I've seen the movie, you know, I saw I saw iRobot come.

Kelly Stanton:

You can't. I know, right? Yeah, yeah. My husband and I joke all the time, like, this is all great. Till Skynet becomes sentient, then what? Right. We're like, ah,

Chuck Rinker:

exactly. And I'll, I'll equally jokingly say we're giving way too much credit for the computer science geeks that believe with a, a couple of chips of silicone and some fancy algorithms, we can, we can redefine human intelligence. That's not the case. The case in reality. Is that when you talk about trust and what AI really does, AI is really good about having a group of really, really smart people teaching it to do one thing and do one thing very well. And that's whatever specific problem you wanna solve it, whether it's. AI that a lot of people see in the healthcare sector is, you know, AI that might help a radiologist read a, uh, an imaging scan or AI that might evaluate blood tests and give you some probable, um, outcomes and, um, risk factors for, you know, reading blood tests. Our AI is totally different. Our AI is meant to. Um, bringing that same level of engagement that we've done in electronic entertainment, uh, to take it beyond the voice interfacing that I have, the utmost respect for the Cortanas of the world, the Alexas, the series. As a matter of fact, we make no bones. We've been a Microsoft innovation partner since 2007, and we rely heavily on their AI algorithms. However, the difference is some of. I'm gonna use the word co competitors, cause I think we all have the same goal, but their approach is more for, Hey, I want to create this character that's ultra photo realistic. It's gotta look like Kelly. It's gotta have the same glasses as Kelly, the same smile as Kelly. Everything to be that human replication and that creates a sense of distrust in my mind. At the core, let's be honest, we talk about the stigma. Of the young patient. We, we alluded to the opioid addicted young parents. There's a stigma there anyway. Well, if they don't trust a real human, why are you trying to recreate a human? What we're trying to do is create a communication portal so they feel safe and they feel, um, empowered in that there's an empathetic ear on the other side that's not trying to judge against them. So the AI that they create sometimes falls into a term where you use, called uncanny. Uh, quite honestly, it was, it was first introduced to me by the Vice President of Imaginary at Disney. We were talking to Disney about how to utilize these characters, and the first thing, uh, uh, John Snotty said was Hey, you need to rethink that. I've been there, done that, and. the uncanny valley's a real thing, meaning when something's too natural and we try to be too realistic. Um, since it sounds like you're a movie lover like myself, if you ever gone to a horror movie and if the head turns a little too far, or the eyes are a little too big, or things are just a little outta whack, it creeps you out quite honestly.

Kelly Stanton:

Yeah. No. And you're immediately disconnect from it because you're like, oh, this isn't real.

Chuck Rinker:

You know? Exactly. That's that suspension of disbelief in gaming. However, when you also talk to the Disney animators I've talked to and you talk to all the gamers I've talked to and worked with it, you know, EA and some of the other gaming companies I've worked with indirectly. You know, we already say the eyes of the, uh, winded to the soul eyes are big on cartoon characters. Not only cuz we think kids are cute and kids have big eyes, but there's a ability for an innate character. To create emotion, empathy express. And it be believable. Disney convinces you that a skunk has a personality cartoon skunk. Not saying we're gonna have skunks coat duck anytime soon, but the same, the same sensation is Eric. When you talk to your game character and I'm seeing this football player running around, or I'm playing a Mario Carter, of course I'm six eight, so I, I play Bowser all the time. But when I'm playing Bowser and you see Bowser growling and making those motion, I actually believe I'm Bowser or Bowers in there because you're creating that emotional connection, that bond and trust without the creepy factor, quite honestly. So, so we're not trying to do that. We're trying to create, if you notice on our website, a lot of people, there's a whole industry that gardeners LA labeling digital humans. We're not digital humans, we're digital personalities. There's a big, big, big difference. And, and that, that's a takeaway that we try to bring to the, to, to the table for the market and for the healthcare sector.

Kelly Stanton:

Oh, that's interesting. Wow. Um, well, and so ties right into that too. Uh, we read, uh, about how you've got program gesture communication for the deaf community, um, and, and tied that in. So given that you were just talking about this rare language that you guys learned, You know, not what we think a s l looks like for those of us who don't actually speak it, right? Mm-hmm. So what brought that focus into play?

Chuck Rinker:

That focus came into a co couple of ways. We, we focused in on gesture communication. We started early on with our, um, PRSONAS and, and we're not infallible, to be honest. Our first generation of PRSONAS was, Uh, overly photo realistic approach, and, and we got corrected. We got, we got we got, we got corrected and told, you know, that we ought to change our approach. So as we focused on the communication elements and we started teaching to speak different languages and all, and we started looking at underserved communities, we did some early work with Gal University out of Washington, which is probably the, if not one of it, is the probably most predominant. University for the, for the deaf community. Um, and got some positive feedback on some of the work they were doing in their labs and some of the pieces we were doing, which was trying to extend gesture communications from me. This waving at you like I'm doing now, to actually making that a more definable meaning behind the gestures. And so as you get more and more accurate into what the gestures are representing, It obviously migrates into gesture based communication with assignment. So we have two members of the deaf community on our staff right now. We're doing a lot of legwork to try to, uh, create that, um, in a more scalable fashion. There's still some, uh, labor intensive approaches to that, but what we've found is that, um, The deaf community is almost nil represented in clinical trials. Obvious reasons, most clinical trials conducted in English, and even when they're attempting to reach underserved communities, maybe at least in America, we're, you know, we're spoiled from, from Maine to Tijuana. We speak English, um, but there's, you know, maybe a Hispanic outreach or a small French population here, or. Mixed Techer for those very specialized pizzas we were talking about, but Assl was spoken by 30 million plus as their primary form of communication in the us you don't have to just be deaf, you can be hard of hearing, you can be a member of a deaf family. So there's a lot of instances where assl and gesture communication is your primary form of communication. So our desire here is to open up the demographics of clinical trial and even he. in general, even though clinical trials, what, what we're probably talking a lot about today. We have hospital wayfinding solutions. We do retail communications for the deaf, we do, um, um, patient advocacy type pieces. You, you can think through what, how that would play into a, a scenario in the healthcare sector. So we basically got into it with the ability to say, wait a second, if we're gonna be inclusive, if we're gonna focus on communication, not human replication. You know what? Asl, 10% of our population, almost eight to 10%, uses ASL as one of the primary forms of communication. That's a big population just to let sit by the wayside.

Kelly Stanton:

Yeah, definitely, definitely talk about underserved. Yes, huh. So how have other applications or connections to the life sci, uh, life sciences industry do AI and digital personalities, um, have, how, how does that sort of expand, do you think, beyond maybe clinical trial focus?

Chuck Rinker:

Um, it's, it's one of those, uh, another challenges you've highlighted, which is, When we're focusing on what we call a dxp, a digital experience platform, a a UX layer, how do you communicate between an enterprise solution? The use cases, quite honestly are almost endless. Meaning if, um, um, I'm a cancer survivor myself, so when I was diagnosed with. Late stage colon cancer. The first thing I did is what every cancer guy he does, and girl is jump on the internet, go to the ACA and go, oh shit, I'm gonna die. Pardon Of the French. Mm-hmm. and, and that was unvetted information. That was a overreaction That was thinking about a patient advocacy role where if I had. A trusted embodiment of a healthcare provider. Every healthcare provider can't wait up night and date with every cancer patient. So they would typically try to tell you, the first thing I always tell you is don't go to the internet. Don't go to the internet. Of course. Yeah. Come on. We're 20, 23, right? We go to the internet. Um, so, uh, use cases like that would be ta tailored towards how can you be a patient advocate for, for, for a, uh, a given. Vetted information repository. We've done early talks with AMA about some of the journals you would see like in the New England Journal of Medicine. You know, how do you disseminate that information without everybody sitting around reading abstracts on 14,000 published articles? Wouldn't it be wonderful? If Kelly Stanton was the avatar in front of, uh, uh, uh, the New England Journal of Medicine, and I could say, Hey Kelly, I'm looking for an article on survival rates of Duke's three C colon cancer with, you know, chemotherapy treatment, and all of a sudden you're able to propagate that without me understanding databases and I'll, I've just asked that question verbally to an avatar that I trust. That looks like the demographic I can identify with that has that empathy and emotion that can be scaled. So that human engagement would be like me having my own personal patient advocate. So if you think of any healthcare from wayfinding, Hey, I'm outta hospital. I've never been there. My wife's sick. I don't know my way around. I'm supposed to be at imaging in two minutes. How do I get there? Hey Daphne, how do I get the imaging

lab?

Chuck Rinker:

Our, um, we do a job with. North, north, I'm the court system in Nevada. You walk in and it says, what's your name? And I'll say, I'm Chuck Greener. And he says, oh, you know what? You got traffic court at three o'clock. You're in courtroom 3 0 4, and here's how you get there. Hold your cell phone up and we'll give you a map to get there. So the use cases, I know I'm, I'm trying to throw out some examples to get the flavor, but the difference is not the specific use case. The difference. how are we communicating with this plethora of iot technologies and cognitive services and AI and speech to text and text to speech and enterprise solutions and all this stuff that's very tech heavy? How do you, how do you cut that down to just, how do you and I communicate when we're talking right now? And if I can wrap all that back head technology and create a personality so we're engaging like humans, engage. That just opens up all this backend capability, all these use cases you're alluding to, to a new way of engaging humans.

Kelly Stanton:

I, I, I good. Yeah, yeah. No, I was just thinking I would love to have that be our help center in the software platform that we provide. Like, hey, talk to a quality professional. And it's not, you know, Clippy, in the corner. We joke a lot about Clippy. I love Clip. I love clip. Well, and it's funny cuz we joke a lot like we, you know, we're constantly doing, trying to improve the help center experience and improve the navigation. Improve the search engine and we're like, we wish we had clippy. Could I just ask Clippy a question? You know, but I love the idea

Chuck Rinker:

I've heard is, oh, go ahead. Yeah, I, I hear Microsoft's got a new version of clip. It's not clip, it's actually gonna be a digital personality that they're trying to roll into some of their teams pieces. So the point I'm bringing up there is this is coming, you know, it's not a, it's not a win. The, the, um, I mean not a, if it's a win. And to me it's what are you gonna do with this ability? That's going to be a positive impact on people's health and wellness. Versus quite honestly, just having kids have more fun and run through Mario 15 You right?

Kelly Stanton:

Cause we know that's coming someday. Oh God, right? Yeah. No, and the other thought I was having, as you were talking about all that too is, is somehow making sure that these personal, these personalities are connect, connected to, um, good vetted libraries as well. Right? Like when you ask Dr. Google and you get 5 million answers and three quarters of'em. You know, chat bots from some other country or, you know, bad AI content or whatever. Like, I, I feel like that erodes the trust. And so, um, I don't know. You know, my next question was about technology in the next five to 10 years, right? I mean, I, I think we're touching a little bit on some of the challenges to be solved, I think, to make this real. But, you know, in that five to 10 year timeline, what, what do you see then? How, how does that, how does that improve? Yeah. How do we control it or, at least make sure that you know Dr. Google is accurate.

Chuck Rinker:

That is almost an impossible question. Um, and in a, not a softball then as No, that one's, that one's a little tougher. Thanks. You, Greg. I'll, I'll see how I feel. This one. Um, but, but in all honesty, the, the way we're trying to field in that is going to, uh, companies, uh, uh, I don't know if I'm supposed to be mentioning some of our current partnerships, but we work with some pretty large health organizations. Um, um, and the ideal there is to say, guys, we're the per, we're the engage in these experts and it's forming those partnerships, forming the companies that have the um, um, ethical check sums, we'll call them in place for what the knowledge base behind that personality. It's important to understand. That we're not creating those knowledge bases when we talk about AMA or Adventist Health. Like we did, we did some work with the Disney Hospital where we created a bear that would greet kids that needed imaging done and, and put the kids' mind at ease to reduce the nation rates and stuff. And the RTI piece we mentioned with the, uh, uh, universities for the opioid addictive characters. My point is we're working with the clinical trial team, the clinical trial management team, and, and even in retail, you know, what is, what is your brand? What is that vetted inform. And we take a little bit of a different approach. We're not advocating machine learning. I'll, I'll be totally blunt and upfront about that. We use Microsoft's definition, which is what we call active learning. So we wanna make sure that that information that we're training, that knowledge base that we're putting into our persona's head. I was getting to say da, we call our deputy, she's off through my right ear. You can't say her off camera, Um, but every, every company creates her own personality. Workers credit union calls'em, Olivia. You know, uh, with Rita for r t i, we have Rita, which is the, um, Hispanic girl Tia, which is the black female in Ivy, which is the, uh, white female. Um, so everybody kind of creates these personalities, but we teach that personality what we want it to represent, so that knowledge base, when I talk about machine learning versus active learning, is unlike your, you know, your graph G P T that everybody's talking about and all, we're not letting our avatars make up their own response. It doesn't mean we're hand programming everything, don't get me wrong. We're definitely a scalable solution, but what we do is once you've onboarded, just like you were an employee, I onboard this employee. I teach the employee what vetted information we wanna disseminate, what we wanna push out there, what we think is appropriate to the audience that we're targeting, and then Daphne will answer everything she can. If Daphne doesn't know an. She actually doesn't make stuff up. She stop and says, Hey, you know what, Kelly, thanks for that question. I apologize. I don't know the answer, but we'll get back to it. Then what happens is, in this continuous improvement cycle, this client success cycle we have, we go back to that team, that clinical team, that retail team, that patient experience team, that passenger experience team to do some work with airports as well, and say, this is what your employee, Daphne's, your digital employee doesn't know. How do you want her to handle this response? And then we train that response and then Daphne gets training. We train Daphne, just like you train an employee now she has training to act responsibly in the name of your brand. So I hope that at least partially targets, you know, how we've work with an AMA or how we work with a New England Journal or or clinical trial team. It's really that collaboration with them for those standards.

Kelly Stanton:

No, I like that. And it. Uh, certainly makes me feel like I should trust it. better, right? Yes. I, I, that, that's helpful. Well, if we pivot a little bit back to you, if you could go back to the start of your career, what would you tell yourself based on what you know now? Oh, wow. And more softballs for you,

Chuck Rinker:

like,

Kelly Stanton:

yes, you did. Um,

Chuck Rinker:

I, that's, that's, I wasn't even prepared for that one. I was prepared for everything about that question.

Kelly Stanton:

um, well, you reference, you know, from cattle farmer to military guy. I mean, that, that's intriguing to me. I, I'm an Air Force brat. I have horses and chickens out back. I've worked cattle in my life. I, I get that whole life. Awesome. And yet here I am over in life sciences, right? Like, we all have our, our things and our story. So yeah. What would you, what would you tell yourself. Now, I mean, I, there's so many things I wish I could tell myself, but yeah. What would you tell yourself? Well,

Chuck Rinker:

it did, it did take me a long time, quite honestly, to get outta the, um, I won't call the word stigma. That's a little harsh, but you know what, what's expected of a, of a young cattle farmer? Yeah. Um, I never, even on an airplane till I was 20 years old. And then once I got out there and started seeing what was potentially impossible, I'll give 110% credit to my, to my, to my father. He instilled a sense of work ethic, like nobody I've ever. And whatever you wanted, you work hard for

Kelly Stanton:

and Absolutely. Um, that essence, you're not

Chuck Rinker:

entitled Yeah, exactly. Uh, amen on that one. Um, yeah, but that, that persistence, that don't let the perceived where you're at stop of where you want to go, um, um, is, is probably a little philosophical takeaway of what Dad instilled in me that, uh, that I think, uh, uh, got me into the, um, well, you know, Just because Disney was Disney doesn't mean some of the principles Disney laid out couldn't be leveraged in. I'm no, I'm no Disney, but I do li I do follow a lot of, uh, what Disney's philosophies around. Uh, human experiences and so to, to, to look at that and realize that, you know, the Steve Jobs of the world and the, um, Elon Musk of the world and the Walt Disney of the world all started with the basic understanding of what they were trying to change in the world. And every single one of'em, neither one of'em started out with the old silver spooning about you've heard the stories of Walt Disney and all. So I'd kind of like to at least. I haven't accomplished that level of, uh, uh, uh, of genius that I like following in those gentlemen mentioned. But I do think it has played a lot of that role on telling the younger Chuck, you know what? They did it. So you, you, even if you're not changing the world, you can, you can change a few lives along the way.

Kelly Stanton:

That's awesome. I love that. I love that. Yeah. I won't veer too far off the, the track there, but, uh, I do, you know, having spent some time in the rural agricultural parts of this country, I went to Texas a m University. Like there is such an amazing. There's an amazing view of the world that I think people sell short. And so it's, it's always, I agree with you on that. I'd love to tell those guys, Hey, keep chugging, man. You've got this. It's, that's really

Chuck Rinker:

powerful cracking with you. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm feeling that vibe. Yep. Definitely. Definitely. There's some, there's some interesting things that come out following the history of some of those individuals. Definitely. Especially the Walt Disney individual. He's, he was a remarkable man in how he. Understood human behavior and how his goal in life was really to bring parents and kids together. And you do that by engaging everybody. Can you engage everybody through imagination and emotion? And that's what motivates people to be such Disney, develop followers of the Disneys of the world, the Apples of the world, the companies that have that brand recognition and brand loyalty. And that's really the power I'm trying to bring to persona, is that PRSONAS can become that trusted, emotional, empathetic. Personality that we all trust. And it's, to your point, it's, it's, it's collaborated on with other innovators that see that same future and create positive, vetted information in use cases. You know, we do have a chance to change the world for the better. That's

Kelly Stanton:

so awesome. I love that story. Uh, last, uh, maybe not so softball question for you. I love this one. So if I walked into Barnes and No. what section would I find you in? What would you be looking at and reading?

Chuck Rinker:

Where you would find me and where I'd hope you'd find me are probably different.

Kelly Stanton:

That's, I can relate to that.

Chuck Rinker:

Yeah, I, I think where you'd find me is in some section, depending on where you saw me. Where you saw the PRSONAS, you would see, oh, here's the hospital management, the facilities management section, and they're gonna talk about a wayfinder solution. And then there's another section over here that's, um, you know, related to, uh, marketing, how do you market a better brand and get people to have brand loyalty. So we be found in the marketing department. In all honesty, I wanna be in the philosophy department. The philosophy group. What is the philosophy of a PRSONAS? What is the philosophy? Of human engagement, human communication. So I'd like you to find me in the commu the philosophy section, but I think you'd find me in those use cases.

Kelly Stanton:

Interesting. All right. Well, um, to wrap it all up here, where can folks go to connect with you and, uh, find out more? Follow your company's progress.

Chuck Rinker:

Wonderful. I appreciate it. Um, actually I'd love for anybody who's gonna be ATS 2023 this year in Chicago to stop by our booths is gonna have a small booth there and a presence. I do a small talk and a few demos. So for those that are interested in the healthcare use cases, we've talked about, welcome to Stop by and See 2023, um, specific use cases. Within that we have, um, our product focus, what we call our iHealth assist, just like it sounds, the letter. Health and assist ass ist.com is really what we call our powered by PRSONAS. Uh, uh, focus on the healthcare sector. That's kind of, we, we call it PRSONAS with the heart. Um, so, um, but the PRSONAS, if you're, if you're interested in kind of like the underlying philosophy of what a digital personality is and all the different commercial use cases and industries that can conserve our platform is under PRSONAS.com. Dispel PR. O n a s. Um, I personally, to be honest, just because I like following people and seeing thought leaders in their spaces, I probably spend more time on LinkedIn than anybody. So if, if, if, if you really wanna connect with me personally, you're probably better off doing it on LinkedIn

Kelly Stanton:

Awesome. Well thanks a lot for your time today, Chuck. We'll look forward to, uh, seeing where this goes in the future.

Chuck Rinker:

Absolutely. Kelly, ed, you sincerely appreciate it and it was a pleasure meeting you. Yeah, it was. Happy farming.

Kelly Stanton:

indeed.