Consolidating essential care tech into one, optimized ecosystem is how Mike Wang, former Green Beret and cardiothoracic nurse, and Founder and Chief Clinical Officer of Inspiren, is working to make his revolutionary tech the standard across senior living. Listen as Mike discusses how his devices are created with caregivers in mind that provide actionable data to help inform optimized operations. 

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Intro

Welcome to season eight of Bridge The Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. Powered by sponsors Aline, NIC MAP, Procare HR, Sage, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. Produced by Solinity Marketing. Bridge the gap in three, two.

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00:34 - 00:49

Lucas McCurdy

Welcome to Bridge the Gap podcast, the Senior Living podcast with Josh and Lucas. A great show today here in San Diego. Spring, NIC, wonderful friends and great thought leadership. I want to welcome Mike Wang, founder of and Chief Clinical Officer of Inspiren, welcome to the show.

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00:49 - 00:50

Mike Wang

Thank you so much for having me,

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00:51 - 01:24

Lucas McCurdy

Man. We are so excited and we love your energy. Number one. And we love the stories of the industry, of great entrepreneurs, and this is what this show is going to be about with Mike. Mike, you have an incredible background. You're not just a tech guy. I'm reading some of your bio here. I mean, you're former Special Forces.

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You served abroad, in multiple stints, and then you became a nurse before you started. You founded this company seven years ago. Give us the genesis of even just the name of the company you founded.

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01:24 - 01:37

Mike Wang

The name. Inspiren. Ren R.E.N. means altruism in Chinese. So the name literally means to inspire that altruism and also bringing technology humanity together. So, yeah, that's what the name means.

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01:38 - 02:32

Lucas McCurdy

Kind of a thoughtful guy, right? You see, nothing is done willy nilly. You're 3D chess, like, all the time. And, you know, off camera and our listeners are going to get really a special look and insight into a brand new product release that I think is going to transform how people age and how people's care actually takes place.

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It's going to improve it, which benefits everyone. And you're a thought leader, AI is a big conversation right now. And sometimes it's a bit of a scary conversation. And people, it's like, oh my gosh, just another thing I have to understand all of this, but can you kind of bring the complex down for me and Josh so that we can understand how these technologies merge together and how you've brought it together all in one product system.

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02:32 - 03:59

Mike Wang

Yeah. So, AI is now no longer in future tense. It is being used as we speak. Right now. So when I started the company back in 2016, nobody was talking about AI at that time. That was sci-fi, right? But we foresaw the power of the technology being able to catch up. And the timing's exactly right.

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So this year, we are bringing the first full AI ecosystem, with fiscal AI combined with software and powerful AI engines to be able to bring the whole thing together. So we're very proud. The fact that we're the first company to be able to do this, and this has been a part of the vision since day one, and now it's all coming together.

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So because of that, the entire Inspiren team has been working super hard to be able to bring this ecosystem, now to the market exactly at the right time. And also, this is something that the market has been asking for for a long time, right? Instead of fragmented solutions, 3 or 4 being piecemealed together, why not have one singular platform that does all of this?

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So, very excited to be able to launch this, with my fantastic team of clinicians, engineers, designers, we cover all of the different aspects. That's involved with launching a great product. So, I am very proud of my team. So shout out to the Inspiren team.

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03:59 - 04:23

Josh Crisp

Well, you guys are really becoming thought leaders in the space. And let's not brush over the problem that you have sought out to solve, or maybe even plural problems. So unpack that a little bit. What you identified as the challenges that operators, owners are facing or clinicians that needed to be solved. And your team has kind of developed a solution for that.

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04:23 - 06:48

Mike Wang

What the industry doesn't need is another singular solution that does one thing right. So if you remember back, we're all old enough to remember the days when we used to have the camcorder, the CD player, the MP3 player, and when you go on vacation, you bring all of these hardware and software together trying to link it all together.

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Kids today don't know what that's about, right? We all remember, right? The same kind of consolidation of technology is taking place as we speak. That is a very good analogy in terms of what we're seeing. The need of the market is. So instead of having siloed solutions, it should be one singular platform. And that's able to solve multiple solutions and multiple problems, and is able to do it under one singular platform. So some of the things we're solving for of course, from an operational perspective, right, to be able to have operational intelligence that tells you precisely how your staff are spending their time, what type of care are they actually delivering?

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How does that impact your billing? How does that impact your finances? And also, how does that impact the operational and financial health of your organization? That's really important. If you have a solution, that can solve just one thing, but it bankrupts you. The following week is not good for anybody. Right? So the way we look at how we solve these problems is there are problems that you can solve that are basically, money saving.

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So you save on something, but there's also this other bucket which is revenue generating. Right. How can you actually generate additional revenue from it by putting two together. That's really when you begin to see the improvements in margin and so on. So from that perspective, that's our primary focus to be able to bring better financial health as well as operational intelligence, to the communities, but also from a care quality and a safety perspective, how about a solution that actually focuses on prevention, being able to stay ahead of problems as opposed to reacting to them?

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Right. And that takes a sophisticated kind of technology because these are the sophisticated types of problems that are multidimensional. All right. So how do you have a technology that can anticipate, that can prevent. They can stay ahead of problems and be proactive as opposed to being on the defensive?

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06:48 - 07:49

Josh Crisp

it seems like and I'd like to hear your thought process. One of the challenges is in our industry, beyond just what you've unpacked for us has been that if you look at the load, a caregiver or, local, operator, management, company administrator, all that they're faced with, across, everything that they're providing for a resident, you know, oftentimes you have to make a product intuitive.

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So it sort of makes the caregivers job easier. I think one of the challenges we've had in our industry historically is not necessarily an absence of tech, but an absence of tech that comes with an interface that almost enables caregivers to work, at an optimal level. And it seems like with the intentionality of and thought that you've put into that, you're really equipping to that level. Can you tell us a little bit about your forethought in that area?

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07:53 - 08:14

Mike Wang

The key to adoption of technology is that intuitiveness. And also at the end of the day, you have to answer the really important question as a caregiver, how does that make my life easier? One thing about Inspiren that's very unique is we are a very clinician driven culture, right? I myself spent six years on the bedside.

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30% of our company are all caregivers with a minimum of seven years of experience. Every aspect and every functionality of the technology is designed from their perspective. In the end, if they don't adopt it, they don't use it. If it's not making their lives easier, it is useless, absolutely useless. So everything has to be designed from that perspective.

And when we do that right, that will lead to high adoption. And also even more than that, champions of the technology from those who actually use it. So that intuitiveness is really important. The ease of use is very important, right? If our iPhones were really difficult to figure out what to do, you have to have typing codes and all of this stuff. No one would use it. Right. So we really adopted the Apple approach to the product in terms of making it so intuitive, so easy. And also there's a clear answer at the end of the day of how this makes caregivers' lives easier? By taking away the manual documentation, because I don't know, any caregiver who wakes up in the morning says, wait, I can't wait to document today. Really take all of those burdens away from them so they can actually focus on what they do best, which is providing that compassionate and unbelievable care that they signed up to do in the first place.

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09:32-10:31

Josh Crisp

The themes that I've heard thus far, a couple of them are resonating with me, are improving quality of care, while helping control the cost of that quality. That's huge. So, you know, I watched you, first of all, I've been kind of watching you, from a distance. You know, you're an impressive person with an impressive background. Done some really cool things, but the intentionality. And you're walking up with this black box that looks like a presidential case with some very secret buttons. And it happens to be sitting beside us right now, and I can't ignore, curiosity is killing me. I kind of would love it if you could give us a little bit of a show and tell and talk us through, because, you know, anytime you bring something that's really cutting edge, I think it's good for people to kind of have a visual. So for some of our listeners, you're going to have to take a peek over to the visual channels. But I'd love for you to talk about the components of the system and how it all works, if you don't mind.

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10:31 - 13:10

Mike Wang

I thought you’d never asked. So one thing that you will see is we take design very seriously. We believe things in this environment should be beautiful. It should be intention, and also, it should have a human centric design to it. I'm coming from a world of acute care where everything looks really ugly. Right? So imagine in a space where you're supposed to live, you're supposed to heal, you're supposed to receive care. And then this is a really ugly thing that's staring at you on your wall. That's not ideal. Right? So, I really emphasize on intentional design, and you are going to see just how intentional we put into every single little detail.

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So what I'm about to unveil here is the inspiring ecosystem. Okay, so, for the first time, the hardware is catching up to the advancements of the AI software to be able to beat the data collection point where you are collecting data from the real world. This is a very important shift in dynamics here, because traditionally, how we've recorded what's happening and what's going on in the real world is through manual documentation.

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Right? So traditionally, I would have to say I'm sitting here and I'm doing this and so on. You can depend on that. Right. So to have physical hardware that has the capability to automate the data collection, to have high data integrity, then that feeds into the AI engines. That's really the appropriate way to do it. Right. So what I'm about to show you is our physical AI that we have developed, this is proprietary to inspire, and, there's no nuclear launch closing here. Although I wish there was. So let me open this for you so you can see exactly what I'm talking about.

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All right, so this is the Inspiren ecosystem here. The star of the show is called AUGI. Okay. AUGI stands for augmented intelligence. So given the name, it's not replacing intelligence. It's not automating intelligence. It's augmented intelligence. This is our latest hardware. It's called AUGI Gem G.E.M. As you can see, it looks kind of like a gemstone. And I very intentionally put this through into my industrial design team to make sure that one, it looks super beautiful. Two, it’s slick. And also, it looks great. Even the little angles that you see are all taking inspiration from gemstones and so on. So G.E.M. actually stands for something, it stands for geometric exoskeleton monitoring.

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13:10 - 13:11

Josh Crisp

Say that three times.

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13:11 - 18:30

Mike Wang

Yeah really fast. Right. So basically all G.E.M. does is it turns people into these types of computer vision stick figures. So it actually analyzes your movement and just tells us geometry, how we sit, how we lay in the bed, how we walk. It's very differentiated. Everyone, even to the naked eye. You can tell all three of us are sitting very differently. Right. And chances are, if you sit this way right now, chances are this is how you always sit with a podcast, right? So AUGI is able to collect longitudinal data that's able to know how a person normally behaves. And when that person starts to behave, in deviation from their normal behavior, our care team uses that data to be able to stay ahead of problems.

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AUGI also captures the care that's taking place in a particular environment. It will know the three of us are sitting down having a conversation. It would know a caregiver perhaps, is delivering ADL, care, bathroom care, pet care. So, AUGI automates all of that data collection. And also, this is the latest in edge computing capability. What that means is a fancy way of saying all of the computation takes place on the device level, so it doesn't have to stream massive amounts of data in order to be analyzed on the cloud.

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The result of that is minimal impact on the infrastructure as Wi-Fi is the biggest problem, right. So we wanted to make sure we develop something that does not impact the Wi-Fi and it doesn't include infrastructure change. Okay. So AUGI clicks right on the wall. It's beautiful. It looks like a very fancy light, and also has two way communication capability. So you actually have sound that can come through these vents. And also, it can capture when someone's talking through a mobile application that comes through, even for the heart of hearing, for the residents. Okay, so this is the centerpiece, AUGI G.E.M. And as we know, bathrooms are a huge risk area, right? People always kind of think that as an afterthought.

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Oh. Bathroom. So we developed AUGI Sense. AUGI Sense has no imaging whatsoever to protect privacy, in the bathroom, AUGI Sense uses advanced technology to be able to know if someone has fallen in the bathroom. Even calculates elevation changes. So if you get up from the toilet too fast, which can cause fainting and so on, AUGI Sense will be able to detect that.

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In addition, AUGI Sense actually calculates the amount of time a caregiver uses in the bathroom, providing bathroom care where there's a shower or baths. Or perhaps just regular bathroom assistance. So AUGI Sense captures all of that and is the sister device to AUGI G.E.M. So the whole thing works as a seamless platform to provide total coverage, for everything.

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So also beautifully designed. This is battery operated. It goes right on the wall. Very easy to install. And for the first time, in addition to all of these additional functionalities, now we also have you E-call capability. Okay. The biggest problem with  E-call is when someone calls, you have no idea when they're calling for right. Do they need a cup of coffee? Or is it a medical emergency? You simply don't know, right? With our ecosystem, we have our emergency buttons that are completely wireless. That could be across the entire apartment. It could go on furniture. It could go on the wall. We also got rid of the pull cord. The really ugly pull cord.

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So what we do is we actually put these at different levels. So one close to the floor, one that's waist height basically. So this provides your residents to be able to call for help whenever they want and to activate, call system. Now once the call system is actually activated, you can see through a de-identified and HIPAA compliant image of the room at that moment. So, you know, if the resident is okay, if they need something, you can communicate with them directly, right? On your mobile application, you can actually say, hey, this is Mike. I'll be right there. What do you need? How can I be of help? Right. So all of that is now open communication. In addition, this little thing here, this is our pendant, which resembles, AUGI, actually, it is the same form factor, and so on.

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So, this is a battery operated, and this could be worn around the neck as a pendant or as a watch, on a wrist. So obviously, this provides immersive emergency help. If this is compressed and it goes through the entire AUGI system. So now when someone activates, you can't locate them, you can talk to them and you can see what's going on. All right. So one singular system that does all of this, that's a part of the inspire ecosystem.

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It's a beautiful design. You can see the characteristics. It's consistent through each different device. It really is a very striking design. And we also created different colors as well that goes with different kinds of wallpapers and so on. Once again, intense channel human centric design. Right. Is this something I would like to have at my home? My mom's home. So, every single aspect of this was thought through, and we work with some of the best designers in the world to be able to bring this to life.

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18:30-18:31

Lucas McCurdy

Wow. We can tell.

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18:31-18:40

Josh Crisp

Well, it's impressive. The packaging, it's impressive, the thought that's gone into it and the application it's going to serve is just incredible.

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18:40-18:40

Mike Wang

Thank you.

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18:41 - 18:51

Lucas McCurdy

So Mike some final thoughts here. What’s your kind of big audacious goal, your hope in your launching for this. What's your big hope for this?

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18:51 - 20:10

Mike Wang

So with the launch of the inspire ecosystem, our goal is for this to become the standard of technology across the entire industry. Now compared with acute care space, senior living is actually adopting technology at a light speed, actually far surpass even my expectations because it is driven by this need to increase quality. To be able to have data that's actionable, that impacts not only the operational side, but also the financial side, of communities.

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So this will be the standard of the industry, where the data will be used to be able to evaluate the efficiency of a community, the financial health of the community, as well as the safety of a community. Now, on the other end of all of this is the family members and the families that entrust the care of their loved ones in these communities.

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Right. So now imagine if family members can't understand the standard of this data, what the data means and how this impacts the care process. Yeah. For their loved ones. So this also plays a huge part in differentiating communities, right, to be able to have this technology. And they'll share. Well, we don't have this technology.

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20:10 - 20:34

Josh Crisp

We've often said, you know, the gatekeepers to our residents are those families, those loved ones that are trusting us with their most valuable asset. And so, I'm really excited for you guys, to see how you've been investing in an industry, in the lives of all these residents and their families that you're going to be serving in the operators.

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20:34 - 20:39

Josh Crisp

Congratulations on an exciting launch. Appreciate all you do to make us all better.

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20:39 - 20:56

Mike Wang

Thank you. So much. This is exciting. I can't think of a better way to spend my time, and to serve a better mission than this. At the end of the day, we're saving lives. We're improving communities, and we're protecting those who are the most vulnerable. So, to me, there's no better mission than that.

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20:56 - 21:21

Josh Crisp

Well, it's cool to see how you've been doing that your entire life. And you transition in that skillset and that training and that passion into applying it to our industry. So I appreciate you and your mission. What an awesome thing for me and Lucas to be part of. Thank you. And, thanks for letting us be part of helping you launch this. Our listeners, and our viewers are going to have a real treat. Lucas. So, yeah, pretty cool.

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21:21 - 21:40

Lucas McCurdy

And this is what I love so much about the industry. It's that common thread that binds us all is our love, for older adults and the outcomes, we want them to be excellent. And, Mike, we appreciate your story. Appreciate your time today. I know our listeners are going to want to connect. You can scroll down. The show notes will have a link to Mike and his team and their products. You're going to want to see this even more. You can get a btgvoice.com and download this content and so much more. Connect with us on LinkedIn and thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge The Gap.

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Outro

Thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at btgvoice.com.