Using Remote Hearing Care Services to Meet Consumers Where They Are

Amyn Amlani 0:10
Welcome to This Week in Hearing. My name is Amyn Amlani, the manner in which Hearing Care provides services and technologies is evolving. Today I have the pleasure of talking with two leaders at Tuned Care. Danny Aronson, CEO and co founder and Heather Malyuk, who’s Head of Audiology. So welcome.

Heather Malyuk 0:29
Thanks for having us.

Danny Aronson 0:30
Great. Great to be here.

Amyn Amlani 0:32
Absolutely. So Heather i We’ve known each other for a little while here what you start out by sharing with the audience a little bit about yourself, please.

Heather Malyuk 0:40
Sure. I’m happy to with tuned I’ve been head of Audiology for Tuned for about a year at this point and, and prior and in addition to, I own a business called Sound Check audiology. I grew up as a musician and worked as a professional musician before I became an audiologist. And I think when I first met you, I was working at Sensaphonics in Chicago working for Michael Santucci. And of course, my my career stemmed from that I’m sort of known for working with famous musicians, both with in ear monitoring and hearing conservation, as well as alternative amplification. And I believe that’s sort of how Danny found me. I’ve been working in the world of alternative amplification and remote care since about 2016. And so when Danny reached out about a year ago and said, You know, I’d like to, to see what you think about what I have going on. And if you’d like to get involved, I jumped on it, because I finally had sort of a home for what I had been doing

in a ragtag kind of way. So so that’s my my story. In a nutshell. I’m I’m a music audiologist by trade, but I am a lover of new technology.

Amyn Amlani 1:50
Yeah, yeah. You’ve always been a little bit ahead of your time. And Danny’s a smart man because he hired you.

Danny Aronson 1:57
Absolutely,

Amyn Amlani 1:58
Now we get to hear all about you, Danny, and, you know, prefaced by the fact that you made a great decision. Absolutely. One of the best decisions one of the best business and personal decisions I made. Thank you LinkedIn.

Danny Aronson 2:12
It’s useful for some stuff, apparently.

So I am the co founder and CEO of Tuned. And my background is similar to Heather in the sense that I’m a professional musician. I have degree a degree in music composition from the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv, like writing Old, old school, kind of, you know, modern music.

And then for 20 years, I was fortunate to be the owner of Israel’s largest post production sound studio.

So doing a lot of sound design and music recording, and I was a tank commander in the Israeli army in my, when I was 18. For three years, which did wonders for my hearing, as you can imagine, and I have moderate hearing loss and tinnitus. And I started going through my my hearing care journey, about a decade ago, and I was just

frustrated, I think, a feeling that many people share with frustrated, frustrated.

The whole thing seemed to me upside down and bizarre. And we really started getting into it and

started working on a project that we thought would be interesting called Tuned reached out to Heather who was like, Yes, I’m in and, and really helped us take it to a kind of a different direction than we initially thought and, and build it up to what it is today, which I think is a an exciting and a great, you know, product and opportunity.

Amyn Amlani 3:43
Yeah, and I’ve had the opportunity to play with the Tuned platform. And I’m excited. I think it’s, I think it’s something that’s really going to help with accessibility and affordability as we move into this new era of hearing care. So for our viewers, would you tell us a little bit about Tuned, you know, so what was it? You know, when was it founded? What’s the motivation behind this? I know, there’s some, some who outcomes that that played into this and she go ahead and share that information if you would?

Danny Aronson 4:17
Sure. Heather, I’ll start with this. So Tuned was founded in June of 2020, together with Ofer Ross, who’s our my, our partner and CTO, and later on Kate McGinley, another co founder and head of growth, joined us. The thinking behind Tuned was we’re building a, what is to us the the, the next generation of hearing care or clinics if you want, if you like, what I mean by that is that we want people first of all, we define hearing care in the most in the most in the widest sense possible. So it’s not just moderate to severe hearing loss, you know, here’s a hearing aid, but we are looking at

Hearing Care in the most expensive way. So it’s hearing conservation, tinnitus, mild to moderate hearing loss, so on so forth. We wanted some people to meet people where they are and make hearing care accessible and affordable. And I think what’s different about Tuned is that we’ve created a platform where audiologists and patients can engage with a marketplace where they can actually purchase products. But it is not a it is not a product, it is not a headphone, it’s not a hearing aid. It’s not a PSAP, it’s not a hearable, it’s the if you like the Amazon, or the Shopify, where all of these products and services can live together. And we believe that this is one of the most exciting times in the history of Audiology and Hearing Care, with the new regulations coming in, with exciting, incredible sophisticated innovation coming out, and we meet these people all the time, there’s really incredible stuff being done. And from you know, from a patient perspective, I think this is, this is a huge opportunity for many, many, many 10s, if not hundreds of millions of people who have not had access to world class hearing care, to be able to access it through the through the through the Tuned platform.

Heather Malyuk 6:15
Yeah. And from the audiology side, you know, when we look at the statistics from the World Health Organization, and we see that it’s either currently or in the near future 5% of the world population is going to have some degree of what they call disabling hearing loss, which would be either, you know, mild or more in threshold, we also look at people who have what we would call normal hearing thresholds who still need care. A great example is that I had an appointment over Tuned the other day with a woman who is about 30 years old, normal hearing thresholds, she’s working 10 hours a day from home with headphones, she’s very fatigued, at the end of her day to the point where she doesn’t even want to sit and watch TV or do anything sound related. She needed education, and counseling regarding how to listen safely, how to best use her devices, etc. This is where audiologists can come in and expand their care offerings. So something like Tuned is not saying, Hey, do away with the old model. We’re saying here’s a new model to add, so that you can reach more people. And that’s what that’s what I find exciting about it is that we can look at the population of even just the United States, not even globally and say we have, what 700 million years in this country. We have 11,000 audiologists who are working full time, how can we connect these people and provide a Yeah, greater access, really.

Danny Aronson 7:42
And there’s a structural issue here because 60% of counties in the US don’t have audiologists at all. In New York State. There are 10 counties where there are no audiologist where I live. Once you drive about an hour out of Phoenix, Arizona, there are no audiologists. So accessibility is a huge issue.

And I think, you know, when I tried to, Heather and I’ve been talking about this, when I try to explain where hearing care has been is still kind of today, to people who are not from our industry a good way or a good analogy is to talk about vision. And and I say to them, imagine wear glasses, we’re a product that we’re only dispense to people with moderate to severe vision loss, so that almost blind.

You need to go to a doctor at your clinic to get it dispensed, they would cost around $5,000, you would probably be offered no more than two or three brands. And it might very well be that one of the brands actually owns the clinic that you go to without you knowing that and if you had a mild to moderate eyesight loss like I have, for example, I use reading glasses that cost me $150 At Warby Parker, the clinic would say to you, you’re not a good fit for advanced eyesight aids come back to us when you’re you know, when you’re when you’re when you can barely see. And then we’ll sell you a very sophisticated and expensive eyesight paid for $5,000 as a consumer, you don’t know how much the product costs because it most of the clinics use a system called bundling. So basically, it’s a it’s a setup, you get the actual product and it’s a set of services, cleaning, tweaking, stuff like that, but you don’t actually know what the product costs. You don’t actually know what the services cost and you can’t look it up on the internet because the manufacturers who basically own the category you can’t go on their website and see how much one of these products cost so you can’t compare you just don’t you’re it’s completely opaque there’s no transparency

and all the while there are all of these products, some you know some people call them OTC there’s PSAPs, there’s hearables

products that can help people with mild to moderate hearing loss like myself, instead of being completely reactive and waiting till the problem actually fits our business model, we need to be the other way around, we are proactive, we’ll meet you when you’re starting your journey. And it could be that what all you need to do is to tweak your air pods, or get one of these amazing devices like Nuheara or Sonic Cloud or or you know, and your beyerdynamic. It’s there are dozens of these products out there. And and I think I think the the idea of meeting, kind of turning the turning the category upside down and saying we’re not going to wait for you for your hearing issue to become so acute, that now it fits our traditional business model of selling you hearing a hearing aid. We’re looking at audiologist saying and saying audiologists are the hearing care professionals, they understand hearing better than anyone else, they need to lead this change the see change in hearing care. And if you have an opportunity to go through a hearing screener to go through a process, and then sit down with a professional who will say, Danny, I see you have moderate hearing loss more in your left ear, then in your in your right ear, I understand that you want to listen to music or you need this for work from home. Here are seven different devices from different manufacturers that could work for you choose whatever, you know whatever’s on your budget or whatever can work for you great. If the audiologist says you know what I want you to come into the clinic, I think there’s some stuff there’s I need to understand more, or I need to, we’ll send you to the clinic. So we offer a way to engage with audiologists, which I think is very unique. And and I think what is really kind of sets Tuned apart is that we put audiologists front and center of this, we believe that they are the people with the knowledge with the with the experience, to be able to engage with consumers, and really set them on the right path. And I think that goes to

one of the things that I keep seeing kind of when when established manufacturers talk about or people who are heavily invested in the old business model talk about OTC and one of the things they say is, I don’t think that it’s I’m afraid that people will buy a product that doesn’t work for them, or that they will cause themselves damage or, you know, we don’t feel that patients have enough knowledge to be able to kind of choose the right device for them. Well, great. Go on Tuned, have a one hour discussion with an audiologist and they’ll tell you exactly what is the best product for you. So I think it’s it’s

it’s a, it’s the best possible kind of version of a hearing care clinic that we can that we can

think about which is transparent. So you know exactly what everything costs. It’s proactive and not reactive, we will help you wherever you are in your hearing care journey. I went to a clinic in New York, where they told me you have moderate hearing loss, if you’re not a good fit for hearing aid, comeback next year. I was like seriously, this is the best you can do?

Amyn Amlani 13:05
Wow

Danny Aronson 13:06
This is the best, and this happens all the time. And there’s a cost benefit here. Because if you have mild hearing loss, and somebody says here’s a $6,000 product, you’re not going to buy the product.

So it’s transparent. It’s forward thinking we embrace new technology and regulations. And we are here you know, the focus is on patient care, not on profits and selling and selling hearing aids. That is not the that is not the goal here. Because it’s just a different, it’s just a different business model.

Amyn Amlani 13:38
So to more to summarize all this, and I really appreciate what you said, you’ve got this ecosystem that you’ve built, that is online, where the provider is now meeting the consumer, where they are, whether it’s normal hearing, or whether it’s something else. And you are now providing that individual with services, and with counseling and with information that they need in order to better be able to communicate, regardless of what their hearing status is. And you know, I You’re absolutely right. This is the wave of what’s coming in the future as the evolution takes place. And so for our viewers now let’s do a little bit of a dive into the weeds here. And let’s start out by looking at your platform, the services that you provide. Now we’ll get into the products a little bit later. So can you all share a little bit about the input, you know, some information about that platform? So what are the requirements and what you know, how do you select providers and those kinds of things?

Heather Malyuk 14:41
Mm hmm. Yeah, I can I can go ahead and do that. I’m not What do you mean exactly by requirements? You mean for the audiologist or for the patient?

Amyn Amlani 14:49
So you know, let’s look at it from the provider standpoint first. So how do you now get the service providers to take care of the people that are entering your platform?

Heather Malyuk 14:59
I gotcha. We

have, let me start with a piece of the platform that’s on the audiology side and obviously not the patient side. It’s called Tuniversity. So what we have developed is a resource center that’s almost like a Tuned social media, essentially, for audiologists, where they can interact, they can post things. Myself, Dr. Laura Sinnott and Dr. Kathleen Wallace, we are sort of the audiology team for Tuned, we are continually putting information up on Tuniversity, everything from how to how to look at the screening results, and identify certain things and use those because we realize there are pieces of this that are very new to audiologists, to little things like how to enable Zoom captioning, we have covered every little piece of information they need to know we we wanted to make sure that if an audiologist wants to dive into having a virtual wing of their clinic, which would be Tuned that they can do it very confidently. And so if you know for an audiologist coming out to the platform, we have Tuniversity. It also has information about all of the devices that are on the website, spec sheets, information about fitting them who they might be best for etc. And as well, I know we’re going to talk about this in a moment. But as we continue to vet devices and get For more information, all of that will be updated. So an audiologist just coming onto the platform, they have that resource. Additionally, what we’re working on right now, and should be out soon is a general off the bat training video. A lot of feedback I’ve been getting from audiologists is they’re very excited about this, some have done things like this in the past, and some have not. And so they really are asking for a lot of hand holding. And we’re trying to do that as best we can. So we will have more formal, you know, training videos with examples of patients, so maybe a video of me and a patient, how to how to discuss certain things, etc. Otherwise, the portal is very simple and user friendly. When the audiologist gets on, they can adjust everything from their bio to their hourly rate, other information about themselves specialties.

When they connect with a patient, if they have an existing patient that they’d like to have on the platform, they can either send them what we’re calling a referral link, or they can send them an email generated by tuned which asks the patient to make a portal so that they are connected with that audiologist. From there, everything’s done over, you know, HIPAA compliant Zoom meetings. So in order to have an appointment, all they have to do is get on Zoom, there’s a link through their portal where they meet with the patient. And of course, I like to go over overboard, because I’m an overachiever. So I enabled captions, I record the meetings, you know, things like that. And then essentially, there’s an electronic medical record system over the portal where they can make a note that the patient sees and that’s another thing that we’re changing that I’m I’m here for I love it every every bit of communication that the audiologist writes down any anything that they want to keep track of from the appointment, even a link to the Zoom recording, it’s all accessible by the patient. So there’s, there’s an efficiency here, where if the patient has further questions, they can pull up that recording, they can look at the notes themselves. And they can they can do a little work on their own, too, which is great. So that’s kind of the start to finish. You know how it works from the audiology side?

Danny Aronson 18:27
I’d like to add something to that. I mean, I think one of the things that we’ve been thoughtful about is that when you think about telehealth a lot of times what people kind of think is okay, I’m going to go instead of going to the clinic, I’m just going to talk to my provider on on on video. That to me is like you know, table stakes. That’s that’s that’s the minimum

that you do as a platform. We, as Heather said are overachievers. So, the platform offers the audiologist not just the opportunity or the patient to talk on video, which is basic, but offers a whole set of very sophisticated tools, both in terms of the of the how to set it up and how to do a screener and the screener itself, which I’m happy to say I think is the most advanced screener out there right now with the center questionnaire, digits in noise test and a pure tone test. So we do all three, and the audiologist can compare. We don’t use the screeners as a kind of marketing tool to say Oh, you have hearing loss come by the clinic and we’ll sell you a hearing aid the audio and it’s not a pass fail test the audiologist can actually see the results of the of the other tests and have at least as good an understanding of the of the of the users hearing but we also one of the things I found frustrating is that audiologist I’ve been told for years and years and years you need to get into OTC you need to understand the devices you need to get into telehealth you need you. Most audiologists are small business owners

who are trying to make ends meet and get their business going. And they don’t have the time to do all this stuff. Making a HIPAA compliant clinic is difficult, expensive and time consuming. We did all of that infrastructure. We are connecting audiologist to the OTC manufacturers, part of our agreement with Oaktree, which is something I’m hugely proud of and excited about is that together with Dave and Oaktree, we are going to start sending all of the audiologists on the platform the devices themselves, you will get a package of between three to five devices, they’ll sit with you for a month, or how long, however long you want them to. And you’ll be able to actually,

you know, have a pair of Nuheara in your hands, try it out for two weeks, see how it works for you, or a beyerdynamic or an Anker product, or Sonic Cloud or any of these devices or services that we use. And I think that will, you know, there’s a difference between talking the talk and walking the walk. We want to enable audiologists to walk the walk by physically giving them the devices, not telling them they should join the revolution. Here’s a tool for you to join the revolution. Here are the devices, here’s how they work. Another thing is Heather and her team vets all the devices on the platform from both from I think from a practitioner perspective and a patient perspective, there was so much noise. If you go on Amazon, right hearing aids, you will find $59 hearing aids that will cure your hearing loss, make you coffee, and whatever you want. You know what I mean? It’s like ridiculous. And you’re you’re a consumer, you have no idea because they have 10,000 5 star reviews and everything’s amazing. And this company has that and that company have that. And there’s RIC, and there’s this and you have no idea what these people are talking about. So part of it is demystifying it. Here’s what it actually does. This has been vetted by an audiologist who sat down, listened to it, did Real Ear measurements, and validated that it says what it does on the box. Nothing like this exists.

Heather Malyuk 22:05
But it’s more than that. So So yes, there’s a vetting process, but part of the questionnaire which which is part of the the intake form, the screener, it’s not just part pieces of the CEDRA and the COSI and other things like that. We’re also using other validated questionnaires, such as the modified mobile proficiency device questionnaire, I’m think I’m getting that name, right. So that we’re actually pairing proper devices to technology comfort level, you know, you can have the best device on the market. But if you get an excuse my language, if you get a 35 year old hipster who says, Well, I’m only using flip phones, I don’t want any part, you know, you can’t get them something that has a as an app that they have to adjust, we have to know more information for the new patient base. So So just to kind of go off of what Danny’s saying, Yes, we’re reading all of these. But we’re not saying, Well, this one is the best device, it might not be the best device for that patient. So we’re doing our best to really pair things properly and teach the audiologists how to do that for the for sort of a best practices model.

Amyn Amlani 23:06
Yeah. So let me ask you this. So we’ve talked about more of the rehabilitation piece, but what about more of the diagnostic things? Like what if you’ve got someone with tinnitus, or you got someone with a balance issue? Danny pointed out, you probably want to bring them into the clinic. So how does that look?

Heather Malyuk 23:21
So there’s a referral process. And we we have been, until recently, we had been referring to our screening, our questionnaire portion as the red flag questionnaire, internally, you know, if a red flag pops up, the patient knows and the audiologist knows, and they can make decisions from there. If the patient is near that audiologist, you know, they can go see them in person, they can be referred elsewhere. But one really great thing about how we’ve set this up to things. Of course, there could be medical conditions that need to be looked into, obviously, that warrants and in person referral, there could be degrees of hearing loss that we think are beyond these devices that would require a prescription fit hearing aid that warrants a referral as well. And so we have all of these things in place to look for what we call those those red flags or an asymmetry. You know, in hearing loss, something that would need to be evaluated with bone conduction threshold testing, that kind of thing. And yes, there’s a referral process for that.

Amyn Amlani 24:21
So you guys are essentially a one stop shop where you start on this, this electronic ecosystem. You have these conversations with these individuals, you gather information, if it’s traditional, meaning that it’s typically a rehabilitative kind of treatment intervention, then you move forward with that. And if it’s something more, then you move over to the medical component. Am I Am I understanding that correctly?

Heather Malyuk 24:46
That’s right.

Amyn Amlani 24:48
Okay, that’s fabulous. I mean, I don’t think anything else exists like this. And I know you know, both of you are musicians. You think about that as an occupational hazard. This has huge implications for this population that

doesn’t have the treatment that’s needed.

Heather Malyuk 25:02
Oh, it’s, you know, one of the first I’ve had several appointments with quite quite famous musicians who live across the country, but have seen me when they’re in town. And, you know, we’ve been able to meet over the platform for hyperacusis discussions, tinnitus discussions, I had a really excellent meeting, purely an educational meeting. So it was a hearing conservation educational appointment with a lead singer of a band, his two managers and his monitor engineer to discuss safer use of in ear monitors and set up on stage taking sound levels, etc. Where they would never have had the opportunity to speak with someone in a HIPAA compliant meeting situation, have it all written out on a note that can be accessed this? I think you’re right that this has not existed, like this before. And I one thing that I love about Tuned, of course, I cut my teeth in hearing conservation world is that we’re not we’re looking at the entire ecosystem. We’re not just looking at, oh, here’s some OTC products that we can maybe recommend if someone needs them, we’re saying no, here’s an individual patient, what are their needs? And how can we help them? And how can we empower the audiologist to have the proper information to really help them one of the things we’re going to be adding to to university is masterclasses on how to do different specialties of audiology, and really care for patients in we call it practicing to the top of your license, you know, how can we give more information for you to give better care? So yeah, the hearing conservation side we are continually building out, we have some really exciting things in the pipeline that I can’t talk about yet, but some new tests that we’re developing that we’re going to be releasing over the platform for hearing conservation. And so I really see that side growing very rapidly.

Danny Aronson 26:46
Another thing that we’re seeing, which is very interesting, I mean, I think brings us to a different aspect of Tuned, is that we are heavily engaged in in conversations and, and

relationships with employers to add hearing care as a health benefit, it makes absolutely no sense that you give your employees um dental, vision, mental health now a slew of things. But they’re using their headphones for eight hours a day, every day, every day. And every HR person we talked to, when I say that sentence, there’s like, oh, I use these for eight hours a day to say that. I’m like, do you think? you think if you’re using these for eight hours a day, every day, for two years now and into the future, it might have some impact on your hearing? Would it be valuable to you to do a baseline once a year just to see how your hearing is going. And if there’s any kind of issue, cognitive fatigue, all that stuff around hearing care, we can assist with that. And it’s amazing to me, the responsiveness we’re getting to that, because people get it. Yeah, this has become a work tool. This isn’t just me sitting, you know, listening to music on my stereo at home. This is something that I use to be able to work people are exhausted after meetings, even if you have a mild issue it makes it exhausting to listen to, it makes it difficult to understand. If you have a meeting with 15 people and somebody has hearing loss, and they don’t understand it makes it difficult for everyone, we can improve this dramatically. And we’ve built again, a platform, a system that allows users and patients and employees to come into the platform and engage with audiologists, and find solutions that are not $6,000 hearing aids, there will always be a section of the population where this is a great fit for them. And it’s a great solution. I don’t underestimate it at all. All I’m saying is it’s a subsection of the population, the population in general has much wider needs, which we now can finally meet and Tuned is kind of the platform that we’re using to do that. And we’re seeing huge interest both for employers, direct care platforms, where they can basically add Tuned as their audiology arm. So now if you’re going into and you’re looking for, you know, any kind of practitioner, you can now look for – talk to somebody like Heather and I’ve seen, you know, people talking to Heather, who’ve never spoken to an audiologist before. And it’s sometimes it’s life changing. So yeah, it’s that’s a crucial part of the of the of the mix.

Amyn Amlani 29:29
I absolutely love what you’re doing. You know, in Danny and I’ve had a couple of conversations, you know, the the whole purpose of audiology was rehabilitation, and we got away from it. And we became very, very product centric. And it looks like we’ve righted the ship in the right direction. We’re not quite at the shore yet. But we righted the ship in the right direction. And we’re moving back towards our roots of, you know, how do you sit in a room? What’s the best way to listen to an individual If you sit in the back of the room, you’re primarily listening to reverberation and noise. You know, all of those things that we were taught back in the day.

And in you guys seem to be going back to those basic tenants that allow for communication to take place. And as I said earlier, you’re meeting the consumer, where they’re at whether they it’s a product base, or it’s a counseling base, and I, you know, hats off to you. But let me ask you this. How much demand Have you seen from the audiology sector? Do you have people knocking down your door? Are people resistant? How is that playing out?

Heather Malyuk 30:34
They’re coming like a tidal wave.

It’s been overwhelming. Yeah, Danny, I can’t let you expand upon that.

Danny Aronson 30:41
It’s been, it’s been overwhelming. I think there’s a listen, there’s absolutely a subset of audiology, not just in the US. But in general, where it’s hardcore hearing aids, this is what we do. This is our business model. A lot of these clinics are owned by the big five manufacturers, I get it. And it’s fine. And as I said, there’s always going to be a market for that. What you’re beginning to see is that there’s a new wave of audiologists, and it doesn’t have to do by the way, in age, there’s some of them are older, some of the younger, where they are embracing this, and they’re interested, and they understand that there’s an opportunity, I’ll be very frank, there’s a, there’s a real business opportunity here for you to engage with Tuned, learn the products, learn the process, and we will send you users and customers because we are engaging with these employers who are looking for people to send the send their send their employees to, and this is something that is going to be huge for us in 2022, we already now

have over a million new patients that have access to Tuned as a platform. But think about that, let’s say that out of those million 5% are actually going to engage in the in the platform and take the most conservative estimate. That’s 50,000 people,

new people, not the same kind of 75 year old 80 year old you know, moderate to severe hearing loss, hearing, but new people who are somewhere else on the hearing on the hearing journey, and I think a lot of the audiologist who are joining us, get it understand that understand that potential are interested don’t are not afraid of new technology, are not afraid of the new regulations, they understand like we do that this is a huge opportunity to get out of our little niche and position ourselves. When I say ourselves, it’s the audiology community and the hearing care community, as the leaders of this kind of new ecosystem, just like you say, and and for a lot of audiologists, that is very,

very interesting. And and, and we’re seeing great uptake. And to me, that’s really exciting. One of the things that I find really exciting I would like to see even more is audiologists who speak different languages, Spanish speaking audiologists, Korean, Chinese, we have huge populations here in the US who need representation, and who need access to an audiologist that speaks their language. And these, these audiences tend to be underrepresented and tend to be underserved. So the counties that we keep talking about that have that have no audiologists, a lot of these counties are counties like that. So if I have somebody who’s listening to this and is an audiologist who speaks Spanish, Korean, Chinese, any other language, we’re looking for you there are a lot of people who would benefit from even from from that from that ability. And you could do a world of good.

Amyn Amlani 33:39
Wow, that’s a that’s really interesting. I mean, it Heather to our peers. What would you say to them, as they’re thinking about Tuned and they quite haven’t engaged with you guys yet?

Heather Malyuk 33:49
Well, I’m going to, I’m going to answer that based on what I’ve been hearing from audiologists who have joined

I’m seeing a couple different things I would, right now put them maybe into three, three or four buckets, sort of categories. We’ve got the people who are just baller private practice owners who are killing it anyway and say, well, I’m going to add this and up my revenue even more. Okay, great. We have a couple of clinics who say, they’re going to hire someone just to run the virtual, you know, wing of their clinic. So we’ve got that kind of category. We’ve got the second category of audiologists who are burned out, they’re tired, they feel like they’ve not been getting paid what they’re worth, all they’re doing is selling devices. And they see Tuned as breaking their chains, and sort of freeing them in a way to do more education, counseling, a variety of things work from home, etc. We have the new graduates who are really excited about the new devices, but keep being told that they shouldn’t be looking at them, and that they should just, you know, keep focusing on hearing aids, and they really don’t want to do that. And so they’re looking at this as a way to build clinics. We have several young practitioners who want to

Go to private practice. And they’re using this as a as a jumping point to start their own business. And that’s probably what I’m most excited about is the ability for this to give audiologist more autonomy. And then you know, the fourth category is actually the opposite. I see specialists, I have a couple people in mind, I’m not going to name names, but people who have spent a career 30-40 years really honing a specialty. And now they want to semi retire and practice that specialty remotely, so they can be on the road traveling, I spoke with someone the other day, who’s retirement age, and this person told me, you know, I, I was gonna retire. But I really want to keep working in this one specialty, I haven’t, I realized I can get an RV, and I can travel all around the country. And I can see all my patients over Tuned. So those are, those are the main sort of buckets, my analytical mind, of course, wanted to separate them all and discuss it. But those are the main buckets I’ve seen so far with our, you know, a couple 100 people we have.

Amyn Amlani 35:58
And I think that’s really, really cool. Because again, it gives the patient and you’re meeting the consumer where they are, if they want to come in those practices will allow for that to happen. Those patients who are rule and don’t want to travel, there’s a remote opportunity, those people who may have COVID, or don’t want to get COVID, you know, had the opportunity to be cared for remotely. You can you can send them a device that is prescription based, you know, are traditional devices, you can send them another device, you can do counseling, I mean, I think this is a platform for the ages, and you’re well ahead of your time, as this evolution is just now starting to ramp up. So having said that

$10 million question, what’s next? And I know, Heather, you said there’s a few things that you guys are working on that you can’t talk about. But are there a few things that you can maybe throw some nuggets out or some teasers to the audience of things that might be coming down the pike?

Heather Malyuk 36:51
Oh, well, let’s say, from the hearing conservation side, expect a lot more resources. And we’re starting to develop things that can actually be used in physical clinics, with patients who are hearing conservation patients. So we’re sort of breaking down some of those virtual walls, even to offer more resources. The other thing I’m excited about, you know, I mentioned that I’ve basically been doing this since 2016, kind of in my own way. One thing that makes tuned really unique, and I think any audiologist who’s working with us would agree with this, we have the best team of people that I’ve ever worked with. And I’ve been part of product development and starting businesses, and I have never experienced a team like ours. And the reason I say that is all of us are continually tweaking the portal, and continually tweaking the offerings. And I’ve even heard comments from audiologists already, that seems like every time they get on, something’s improved. And I like us for that reason, because I’m one of those people that always thinks everything can be better, you know, and if I work with other companies, I’m like, I’m always like, why haven’t you fixed this? Why can’t you just make it better? And we’re actually a company that does that. So so that’s, you know, what I would say in terms of things that we can talk about is things are continually being improved. And we’re continually researching. Yeah, the hearing conservation side. I wish I could say more, but I’m keeping it under wraps, because I think it’s something we’re gonna patent and do different things with Danny, do you want to mention anything in terms of improvements?

Danny Aronson 38:28
Yeah, a couple of things. I think tinnitus is going to be a big part of what we’re what we’re looking at in 2022. But I think the most exciting thing, and this is why I would urge audiologists to continue signing up and to go through the listening club process. Getting to know the products getting to know the system is that we’re seeing huge uptick in terms of, of just new customers, new companies, companies that are that are interested in adding hearing care as a health benefit for their employees. And we’re looking at a situation where we can have 10s of thousands if not hundreds of 1000s of new patients coming in looking for an audiologist to speak to and going through the process. If you are an audiologist with a clinic, and you’re interested in new business, which I assume you are, and by the way, one of the things that I

I kind of I Heather and I think kind of found out or the team found out together, which I didn’t know when I got into this, but 93% of audiologists in the US are women. A huge part of that population are small business owners. They’re one audiologists, they maybe have two or three other audiologists working with them in the clinic. doing marketing is very, very hard and expensive and takes a very specific set of skills that not necessarily every audiologist has. And we know that the price of getting a new like the customer acquisition to getting a new customer in audiology is between $250 to $450. That’s just one new customer. With Tuned we’re talking about

10s of 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s of new customers coming in looking for you. So if you’re interested in that, and you understand the business potential of that, we would love to have you on Tuned. And as I said, especially people who have languages or have a specialty or something like that, that would be incredibly useful, because there are many, many people who are looking at looking for that. So I would say for me, 2022 is going to be the year where demand is really going to ramp up. And, and, and the audiologists who are on the platform will be able to reap the benefits of that.

Amyn Amlani 40:35
Well, I’m, I’m really looking forward to seeing what you guys do. I have an account, I need to I need to activate it and be a little more engaged in that. And that’s on me for some of the things I’ve got a couple things that have to get off my plate by the end of this month. And once I do, I’ll be on there. But I’m looking forward to engaging in that as well. I’m looking forward to some of these new things that you have. And like I said earlier, I think you guys are well ahead of the curve. You guys are certainly forward thinkers. And I know that the providers and the patients will benefit from the things that you guys are doing. So we’re, we’re rooting for you. We’re looking forward to seeing what you guys do. And we hope to have you guys back on the show here. Maybe towards the end of the year, and we can get caught up and see where you guys are at.

Danny Aronson 41:22
Amazing. Thanks Amyn, I appreciate it.

Heather Malyuk 41:24
Thanks for having us.

Amyn Amlani 41:25
Thank you so much and we’ll be in touch soon.