Creating User-Centric Audiology Fitting Software with Laura Woodworth

Ever wondered how hearing aid software products are developed and improved based on user feedback? Dr. Dave Fabry talks to Laura Woodworth, Principal Product Manager at Starkey, about her journey in working to create Starkey’s Pro Fit fitting software. Laura's story starts from her time in speech pathology, transitions into a clinical fellowship year at Starkey, and lands into her current role focused on creating the best fitting software in the industry.    We dig deep into the fascinating process of developing Pro Fit, a software that marries feedback from customers and stakeholders. Laura emphasizes how the team at Starkey integrated 'Aha moments' into their creation process to solve common issues. Our conversation also veers towards Telehear, the innovative collaboration between the fitting software and mobile app, which offers clinicians comprehensive data for informed decisions. Laura also shares her thoughts on the growing importance of Telehealth and how My Starkey enhances the user experience with self-check and diagnostic tools. Prepare to be inspired and informed as you journey through this narrative of development, innovation, and user-centric strategy. 

Link to full transcript

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Starkey Soundbites. I'm your host, Dave Fabry, Starkey's Chief Hearing Health Officer. Our guest today is someone who works hard every day to make life easier and more efficient for hearing health care providers. Laura Woodworth, whom I've known for more years than we care to either admit, is the principal product manager here at Starkey with a special focus on our ProFit Fitting software. We're going to chat with her a little bit about that, as well as her process for gathering feedback directly from hearing care professionals and putting that intel and feedback into action. So, Laura, we're long overdue, but thanks for joining us here today on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Thanks so much for having me today, Dave. I am super excited to talk about my favorite topic, which is our fitting software.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Well, you know, and to that end, Inspire, which was the software that predated ProFit, was wildly popular with hearing care professionals. And the risk of this, as we were coming into the pandemic and we were planning, and I and I was fortunate to be a part of some of those sessions where we engaged and involved numerous hearing care professionals. But I was a little apprehensive because people always told us how much they loved Inspire and don't change too much. But that balance really, I think uh it's amazing that you came through without any gray hair and you survived that process so well.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

I'm not sure about the gray hair part, Dave. It's amazing what hairstylists can do these days. I see. You exactly voiced what I felt when I was given the challenge of the opportunity. The opportunity to work on new fitting software, knowing what our customers were saying about Inspire. They really liked Inspire. They were really happy with Inspire. And then knowing that I needed to come up with the next generation, um, it it was challenging, but in a really good, exciting sort of way.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Yeah. And uh, you know, the the thing I remember saying to you is don't screw this up. And you see, many times days.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Well, put a pin in that for a moment because first I want to talk a little bit about you and your journey. Uh, first, your journey to your role now. Talk a little bit about what's a day in the life like. I know every day is a little different, but talk a little bit about your role and how did you find that way on your path to Starkey? How long have you been here? And um, talk about the journey.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah, it it in thinking about what we were going to do today and in thinking about my journey, it is kind of fun to reflect. Um, I came into audiology by the path that many probably take, starting out in speech pathology. So as I was pursuing speech pathology, I then had that wow moment when I had intro to audiology, kind of your 101 class. And I sat there and it was like, this is it. This is concrete, this is black and white, which speech language pathology is not. So it was, it was really that moment that I said, this is my career, and I changed my direction, I changed my grad school, and I immediately switched to audiology. So I went to went on to grad school, pursued audiology, and as I rotated, you're familiar with you rotate through different clinical placements. One of my placements was Starkey at the time, and I was at University of Texas in Austin, Hook'em horns. So I'm in Austin, which has great opportunities there for audiology. You have hospitals. Fort Hood was close by. I was fortunate enough to go there. I went to the hospitals, I went to private practice, but I also went to Starkey. They had a facility in Austin at the time. And as I was at that facility, I got to see they had customer relations people, they had audiologists interacting with production, they had a clinical walk-in program that an audiologist oversaw the patients coming in. They had outside sales, inside sales, so many different ways for an audiologist to interact with professionals, but also with hearing aids. Hearing aids were particularly of interest to me. So as I continued through that and then started my clinical rotation for that clinical fellowship year, Starkey was one of the places that I went back to. And I really had, again, that aha moment. Like of the different clinical placements, this was the one that really it just made me excited. It made me energized to go there and see what new thing was going to happen that day. What was going to be the new opportunity that day? So when I finished school, I completed all my uh clinical hours, I knew that Starkey was where I wanted to go. So I started out there in Austin, Texas.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

And so you did, so just for the younger audiologists listening to this, um, back in the previous millennium.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

When in the previous millennium, when uh the master's degree was the first professional degree, um, a clinical fellowship year was uh an area where you know you went and you were under supervision for one year before you became a full-fledged, then certified audiologist. So you did your CFY at Starkey?

SPEAKER_01 5:42

I did part of my CFY at Starkey. Um I mixed in part at Fort Hood, and then I actually had a clinical placement at a hospital there as well, which was great because I felt like I had exposure to so many different areas of audiology, which made me even more confident in choosing the path that I wanted to go, which for me it was very clear. I wanted to go to a hearing aid manufacturer.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

That's awesome. And so, what was your first role at Starkey?

SPEAKER_01 6:12

My first role at Starkey in Austin, I was uh the clinical audiologist that worked with the walk-in patients, and I was in customer relations. So I was support uh on the phones as well. Um, amazing what you learn. I was interacting and talking to customers every single day, you know, and getting to hear from them what were the things they needed, what kind of help did they need. Um, all of those pieces, all of those interactions built on each other over the years really to get me to where I am today.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

That's awesome. And then how long before you made the journey north to the mothership in Eden Prairie?

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Yeah, it not very long. I had worked at Starkey through my clinical fellowship year, and then I came on as a full-time employee, and I started talking to people in Eden Prairie that it wasn't formally called product management at the time, but it was a product group. And I was saying, you know, hey, down in Austin, we see patients. Are there things that you need done? Are there studies you need conducted? Like, I could help you guys. And they said, Yeah, would you actually consider moving to Eden Prairie? And I'm like, sure, why not? Now keep in mind, I'm in Austin, Texas. I'm from South Carolina. I came up here, interviewed, the moving truck came. I moved up here, and this was all kind of in September. By the time I got up the big T's, yeah, it was fall. It was the warm summer piece was gone, and all of a sudden there's no leaves, it's getting chilly, and I don't know that I fully realized I was practically in Canada.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Well, then I think it is appropriate that this is November and it's National Caregivers Month. We'll talk a little bit about that. Uh, and also as uh you know, California dreaming comes out, but in your case, it was probably South Carolina dreaming when all the leaves are brown.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

It was the leaves were brown, they were falling, it was cold, but man, what an exciting change. I every everything up here, it was it was just on such a bigger scale because now I was at the world headquarters. Um, so super exciting time. So when I moved up here, I started in sort of what was loosely a product group. Uh, we did some clinical work as well. But within the first couple weeks, Mr. Austin needed to do a hearing aid fitting. And my supervisor at the time said, Hey, Bill just needs a hand with the fitting software. Will you go help? And I'm like, sure, why not? And really from that moment on, my next several years were spent working with Bill, fitting patients, traveling, teaching classes. And there will never be a masterclass that can teach me what I learned from him in those years. Like it, it's just amazing the things that I learned.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Yeah, what an opportunity. And as someone who also has had the opportunity to spend time in the Center for Excellence and traveling around the world, um, watching him engage with patients. I mean, you know, with the his mantra, so the world may hear. I think he takes that very literally and wants to help every single person with a hearing loss or hearing difficulty hear better. So what a great opportunity early on. So now let's fast forward to your role today. Um, and so, you know, talk a little bit about when it was that the idea of profit was first germinated. It was prior to the um, we knew that we were gonna do prior to COVID. We knew at that point, you know, Brandon uh Swalich, our CEO, talks about the fact that when he hired Autchin, you know, this was already sort of a secret project to to work on Genesis, and that's really been since around 2018. Um and then, of course, with that, all new everything meant that in the addition to all of the hardware and and uh and the properties of uh for the features that we would need to migrate from Inspire to Profit.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yeah, so I think really for me that there were the engineering, the software engineering team was working on the underpinnings. They were working on um making all of the support, the software engineering pieces better, stronger, faster. But what the customer sees, that that interface, the look, the feel, that was the next step that we needed to start working on. So one thing to me that was very different, and I and I worked on Inspire for many years. Inspire to me was almost organically grown, almost homegrown, if you will. We have a lot of audiologists at Starkey. So we had a lot of people that have fit hearing aids, we had them provide input, we had people that interfaced with customers, they provided input. That's how we shaped Inspire over the years. But for the start of the development of ProFit for the piece that the customers were going to interact with, we didn't want to start the software the same way and grow it over years. We wanted to go right to the customers from the beginning. So a dramatically different start to the fitting software and how we developed it. So the process, we identified customers that were willing to have one-on-one conversations. We conducted numerous interviews, uh, we had surveys, hundreds of input points fed into the software that we have today. And I think the trick with Profit was to meld what the expectation is of customers that have worked with us for many years with customers who aren't as familiar with Inspire and are coming into it and have a very different perspective because they don't have that background. So we really needed to meet both groups kind of in a middle ground, which, as you know, is a little challenging. But I feel like we did a good job with that because we listened to the customers, because we went to them to hear what are your pain points, what are the things that we can do. So that that's really what Profit is based on.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Yeah, I remember that that initial meeting in the WFA auditorium where if you've been to Eden Prairie, you come in the big classroom and we had boards all set up around. And as you mentioned, we had um, in addition to Starkey people who were experienced with either Inspire or the engine, making sure that all stakeholders were represented internally, a lot of professionals were involved. Some, as you said, that were quite familiar with Inspire and could offer from that uh uh benefit of experience things that they really liked and didn't want to change and those opportunities, but then also people who were fitting competitors software and things that they like from the outside. And that is a tough group to pull together and maintain. And and I remember um really thinking um that we had the right group in the right room um at that time. And uh, and I remembered some of the discussion really at that point, it was literally just on a board. There, there was no software, it was the germination of the idea.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

And and if you recall, I want to say we ended up with eight, nine different groups of people. But what was so interesting was that the groups were coming up with very similar concepts, very similar descriptions. For me, that was um when my nerves started slightly abating because I could see like there's all these people of different backgrounds, but yet when they have the information and they're working in smaller groups on their own, they're all coming out with a similar sort of recommendation or a similar proposal, um, which was super exciting. And that's the direction that we went.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Yeah. And and, you know, in terms of getting that feedback from them, were there any moments now, benefit of like four years later, uh, revelations for you or particular memories from those initial meetings of things that were aha moments, like, oh, you know, how come we haven't thought of that before?

SPEAKER_01 15:03

I think for me, the aha moments were almost they were a little different than that. It was when customers said a few of the things that were painful. For example, having to power off then power on a 2.4 product in order to discover it, having to remember to turn off Bluetooth on a paired phone before you could discover it. Because even though we all knew it, we forgot it every single time. Hearing those pain points and then giving those to the engineering team, to the software developers, and saying, hey, these are things that plague our customers. And I know we just say that's the way it is. Is there a way to make that not the way it is? Can we do anything to overcome that? Giving those problems to them and the engineering solutions that they were able to come up with, that still amazes me because, you know, I've heard Achen say if if there's not an engineering solution, if it's technically not feasible, you know, then we can't do that. And I really thought these were going to be technically unfeasible. Um, but the team came together and they found solutions for some just common issues that now people don't have to turn off Bluetooth on a paired phone when they're discovering. You don't have to reboot the hearing aid in order to discover. So sometimes I think a lot of little things really add up to go a long way. Um, and getting to be in the classes and share that with customers and just see them, you know, so excited to say, Oh, I don't have to do that anymore. Are you kidding? And I'm like, no, I'm not kidding. Let me show you. Those have been uh some of the most rewarding moments so far.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yeah, I think, you know, I think Achin pulled over from Intel. If it's impossible, it'll just take a little bit longer. Yep. And uh, and I think also I'm reminded of the fact the Gestalt principle that the the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts, and a lot of preserving a lot of those things, like the menus, whether you're a across the top person or a down the side person, and we still preserve that for people while really simplifying the preparation, the fitting, and the follow-up uh uh sessions that bring you to the right place at the right time. Uh in a follow-up session, I think it's it's ingenious that now when you're coming back, that it automatically goes to the data log screen. And then you, you know, that's the first discussion. I it for me, logically, it makes sense because that's immediately where I'm gonna go and look and see how many hours a day are they wearing them in, what types of environments, what manual programs are they using, et cetera.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Yeah, and and Dave, that is one of the points that um when you interview tons of people, you would know this because you do interview tons of people. I am guessing rarely do you get the same answer to a question. If you pose the question, rarely do you probably get the same answer. That was one that every single professional gave us the same answer. How do you start a follow-up session? Kind of what do you look for? What screen do you go to? Everyone said data log. And when I say everyone, I should note for you in case you're not familiar, we didn't just work within the US. We worked with customers that were international. Those were fun meetings because they would be at very unusual hours for us. Um, we worked with our uh government services audiologist as well. So it was really important to us to talk to customers that were cross-segments from a wide variety of places. You know, you don't you don't want to make these big changes and do all this work and have your focus be on a small group. So we really made sure that we talked to everybody. But datalog over and over and over, start the session with datalog. That was very clear.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Yeah, and trying to meet the needs of all of those different customer groups and culturally uh the different groups around the world and then put that in a coherent package that has a similar look and feel, but under the hood can operate very differently was the challenge. I I'll take the the interviewer's prerogative and say that the two um most memorable events for me, the aha moments from those early ones, was pain point with Inspire was always that uh with my aging eyes, that when I would begin a session in the preparation, I had to try to read the serial number on the device and sort out whether every on a RIC, the devices were all programmed as left devices until we discovered them and assigned them to either a left or a right ear in a in a binaural fitting.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

And now uh the smart connect, I mean, is so simple. I think, you know, for me, that was a major aha moment and a major improvement in the efficiency to just automatically, some might say automagically, hook up the receivers to the device, have it recognize the power, whether it's a left or right, even whether it has a customized uh a coupling system versus a standard dome tip, made my life much simpler and it made it easier on my eyes.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah, reducing some of those, uh we we like to think of it as reducing clicks. We feel like if we can reduce the number of things you have to click into the fitting software, we are creating a more efficient process. And that was certainly one of the things. Have the cable do the identification so that the professional's not trying to read that serial number or trying to listen for the tone and then assign right or left. Uh, that's a little bit tricky. Um, and we had the ability, we had the technology to take care of that for them.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Yeah, and then you raised the second one, the from the box to best fit in four clicks. Four clicks? You know, to really enable the professional to get down to business on doing what they can do to personalize and customize after you get to that best fit, the spontaneous user acceptance and uh and then the features that we've incorporated in order to enable clinicians who are really under the gun to get to that first fit fast.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Right. And even as you're making those clicks, we also tried to make sure there's not tons of text on the screen and different things you're having to read and decisions you're having to make because you're already interacting with that patient, and we want that to be the most important thing. We want you to be able to navigate through and make those clicks without having to halt that conversation so you can turn and try to focus and figure out what's going on in the fitting software. And simple things too, like when it's a new hearing aid, bring it to the top of the list. When the patient comes back and you're discovering that hearing aid, since you already have their file open in your uh database, your NOAA database, then when that hearing aid is discovered, bring it to the top of the list. Don't have somebody have to search through. It's those little things, but they do make a difference.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

For sure. And for me, another, you know, my second big aha moment was I've always had a challenge being that I've spent half my career in clinical practice and the resistance that many clinicians feel to a manufacturer's proprietary formula. Right. We can argue all day long from the manufacturer's side that it's been optimized for our hardware, and to really the software is facilitating the very best to come out of the hardware in as efficient and effective process as possible. But for those clinicians who use real air measurements, I get it that in the past, you know, we're if they're using a proprietary formula, they're still likely verifying according to an independently validated formula. Now, with auto-rem, um, as long as they have one of the very common systems in in use, and and we've, I think, five or six different systems now, um, that they can use auto-rem faster than you can do it manually while still enabling the comfort of knowing that if you have a dedicated piece of hardware that can ensure real air measurements uh provide that accurate first fit to whatever target it is, with the arrangements that we've made with the manufacturers of REM equipment, they now have our proprietary formula. So now it all makes sense to me that if you want to try ESTAT 2.0, you can actually verify that those fitting objectives have been achieved in the patient and automate it, make it faster, and really be part of that efficient process. So kudos to that as well.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Thank you. Yeah, that that we always want to support what clinicians um are looking to do and are looking to use. And and we we all talk about, I know we're trained, uh, our background in audiology, that real year is the gold standard. And we we wanted to embrace that and to work to add REM systems that we're hearing from customers. And it's something we continue to do. It's something we continue, we we understand the value of Real Ear. And uh, I think you're gonna see more from us on that in the future.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

I can't wait. I may know a little bit about that, but I'm sworn to see Christianity. Mum's the word. Mum's the word. So um talk a little bit more about some of the high-level uh features that are different in ProFit, or really, you know, we've hit on a number already. But um, I I think one of the other things that that I think of is Inspire was created well before we introduced um Livio AI, uh, where we're incorporating sensors embedded into the devices. We recognize that hearing care is health care, hearing care is brain care, if you will. And by incorporating physical sensors that can monitor physical activity, social engagement, we we built that into the user app, but that also requires um some effort uh and coordination between the Profit fitting software and the user app, where the patient, the patient interface to the product. But so I think with with Profit, now we could really start knowing that we had several years of experience with embedded sensors, monitoring physical activity, social engagement from the professional standpoint, and carrying some of those features into Profit, whereas you said we could begin with that in mind.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Yeah, and and I think Dave, another important piece uh that fits into that is Telehere. So Telehere to me is is almost in between those two pieces. So Telehere works between our fitting software, both Profit and Inspire, as well as our mobile app. So Telehere being that um cloud-based, web-based system or portal, if you will, that shows us information and and and I'm super excited about the future and where we're going because if you imagine, to your point, all the data, the data coming from the app is so rich and it can really help clinicians, um, just thinking in terms of data log, as you said, we all look at data log as one of the first things in a follow-up. What if we can give you so much more information, better information, because now we have the phone that has the calendar and the timing and the clock. It has all the things that a hearing aid just can't have on it. We can really provide you data with great specificity, and we can take the data and make some inferences and then serve that up to you to make the final decision. What makes sense? Here's the data, here's what we're seeing, then you can make the decision to use it how you will. Um, these are the directions I think we're going to go in the future, and I'm very excited about that.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Yeah, thanks for raising tele here because for me, um, I did my first reprogramming on a digitally programmable instrument in 1992 when I was still at Mayo. And I like to say that telehealth hid in plain sight for about 30 years until we needed it with the pandemic. And at the time, the entrance of the pandemic, we had an asynchronous telehealth feature that people largely didn't use because they felt that it didn't enable them to engage with their patients, et cetera. When the pandemic hit, they suddenly discovered that it was the only way that they could uh effectively communicate with patients to keep themselves safe and their patients safe and families. And suddenly people wanted more. You know, they wanted the asynchronous because I think there's an important role for that type of uh um, you know, if you will, Facebook format. But then they also wanted uh beyond reprogramming, they wanted to be able to communicate and counsel with patients. So the synchronous, there was a strong demand for synchronous. And now we have an offer both a synchronous solution and an asynchronous solution. Talk a little bit about that because I know that this was an area that you were a strong proponent for. Like I said, the adoption rate prior to the pandemic was pretty low. It went up extraordinarily. I think we grew by like six times in terms of the use of it. And then I I sense that uh for many clinicians now they're falling back into the I I don't think that telehealth should only be used in cases of pandemics. But what's your thought?

SPEAKER_01 29:10

I that's a great point, Dave. And and um it's an interesting one with clinicians because a lot of clinicians have different views, but we definitely uh hear from patients because we do a lot of research with hearing aid wearers and with people that are the demographic for hearing aid wearers. We definitely hear from them that they have other synchronous and asynchronous interactions in the medical community with their doctors, with nurses, with different things of that nature. So they are starting to almost expect they believe in it, but they are also starting to expect the efficiency. So we continue to work on expanding what we, the tools that we can give the clinician in that synchronous programming and in the asynchronous programming realm. We we just want to be able to meet the clinician for their needs, but enable them to meet their patients at the point where the patient has defined what their needs are as well. And it's going to continue growing. I mean, as you know, the medical community, they have more and more body-worn devices sending information back to the doctors.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Continuously.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Continuously. So that the doctors can look at exception-based care. That's the place I think we're going to go next with some of these synchronous, asynchronous, and some of these cloud-based solutions.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Yeah, it's way beyond just simple reprogramming. Not that's not simple, but but it's way beyond reprogramming of the devices. That's an important part for both synchronous and asynchronous. But the counseling, there are times that I just use it to get on and counsel about a feature. Show them how to use self-check. Absolutely. Our diagnostic tool so they can empower themselves. Absolutely. That's all telehealth.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Talk about edge mode. It's easier when they can see you and you're showing them, you know, double tap, whatever, however, you have the hearing aid configured. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Yeah, I look forward to continue work in that area. And I also just segues, uh, we're nearing the end of our time here, but Segue's, you're one of the representatives, along with Ramsey Stotz, on uh the to HIMSA, which is the collaborative that uh shows up in terms of what many clinicians think of in terms of the NOAA link programmer and NOAA software. I'm old enough to remember again, way in the previous millennium when we had separate programmers for each of then digitally programmable devices and the collective. How horrible it must have been, Dave. Well, it needed a lot of uh space on the countertop. And in most clinical environments, you just don't have that. So that was the really the foundation of when NOAA uh took off, and then moving from first wired to now wireless programming. I'm looking forward to the future uh in terms of, you know, as a Mac user, I would love to be able to program um using my Mac. Um but talk a little bit about the way that you represent Starkey, providing as a subject matter expert and audiologist into that. Just a little bit of the lay of the land.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

It's been a very interesting project to be a part of. And I think because HIMSA is made up of competitors. So when I was first asked to join this meeting, uh previously HIMSA was it was all the competitors, but it was a technical, and it was basically an engineer from each of the companies that got together and talked about solutions, engineering solutions, engineer, engineer, engineer. So great solutions came out of there, but but they didn't always have the customer, the audiologist, the background. They they weren't always thinking clinically. So then each company was asked, would you like to add a customer-facing person? And I was the uh customer-facing person from Starkey. And I will say I have been pleasantly surprised that while we are all competitors, when we get together, it's kind of like everyone checks their competitor hat at the door and comes in and really focuses on what solutions can we come up with in common that don't take away from each of our own technology ventures, but that we can provide in common to make life easier for the clinician to help them be able to be more efficient when interacting with a software piece so that they can focus on that patient. Teleadiology is one of the things that we're taking on right now because we all see where it's going in the future, but we also know we've all developed our own solutions. Can we now do something that is maybe easier for the clinician if there's a common ground? So that's a that's a big one that we're looking at. And I'm I'm really excited uh to see where we go and where we land with that. And just the fact that we're all coming together to work on the problem, I I it's inspiring to me.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

And focusing on the clinician, not on the end user, and that's I think the ultimate goal for all of us where we can compete yet collaborate. Yeah. So back to Starkey then. How can how can our customers, hearing care professionals, provide feedback directly to product management now? Is there an email address or call or is there a way, is there a mechanism for them to provide feedback if they have some input that they want to see or uh observations?

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Well, absolutely, Dave. I am more than happy to give out my email address, Laura underscore Woodworth at Starkey.com, because the customer input is invaluable, critical, it just makes us better. But even outside of that, um, we have something we call product suggestions. And so as various representatives, customer relations, inside reps, outside reps, as various people talk to their customers, when customers have thoughts, ideas, um, complaints, it doesn't matter what it is. They put in customer suggestions. I probably see, I don't know, 10 to 12 sometimes a day because I'm plugged in to see all of them as they come through. And it doesn't mean that all of them pertain to fitting software, but I have the opportunity to on a daily basis see what customers think, what they're requesting. Um, and it's really a way to stay in touch and then look at our future enhancements and help drive our future enhancements to continue to be based on customer input.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Yeah, I love it. And I love that you gave out your your personal email. Absolutely. Because I think that's the best way to talk is directly to the clinicians uh and uh and get that feedback because it is invaluable. And it's led to, I mean, I mentioned earlier that November is National Caregivers Month. It led directly uh to the development of our, and I know it's on the user app side, but we're the only manufacturer that currently offers a caregiver app, that that people can under the the hearing aid user can give permission to a caregiver, uh family members, loved ones who want to assist them in their hearing journey to be able to monitor in real time. You mentioned about the cloud-based element of this, their physical activity, social engagement. Uh November is also diabetes awareness month. One of the reasons that we incorporated that physical activity is because of the comorbidity between cardiovascular health conditions, including diabetes, and hearing loss. And so it it kind of November kind of fits all together in terms of that caregiver, that uh focus on physical activity and social engagement. And that's really, again, where everything ties together with the software, the user app and all of that. And so I thank you for being such a wealth of information and uh an engaging guest today, and and for your real uh relentless focus on ensuring that ProFit software and the ecosystem of the software, the user app fits together and provides uh an efficient system for both the patient and the providers alike.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

Thanks so much, Dave, for having me. This has been a great opportunity to talk about everything I love.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Excellent. Well, um, for our listeners, thank you for listening to this episode of Starkey Soundbites. If you have feedback for us, please send us an email at soundbites at Starkey.com. If you have ideas and things and topics that you would like covered on future episodes, send us an email for that too, and we'll bring on other experts like Laura, uh, either inside or go outside. And and uh and we could talk about this all day. So thank you for your attention. We look forward to seeing and hearing you again very soon.