How a TikTok Video Led to Real Patients & a Game-Changing Medical Career with Dr. Austin Chiang

[0:00]  a constant challenge because there definitely a lot of creators out there who have huge followings who aren't necessarily considered the experts you know um the in within the field and I I think to your point about educating around critical thinking I think that's the key I think it's really difficult um to teach through that nuance and um and part of the challenge you know even as a simple Concepts take it uh like for the pandemic right there was a lot of news that we we um saw changing over time and and naturally that's how science works it's very Dynamic you know sometimes the evidence changes and we're you know our practices change and but I think to the general public people were uncomfortable with

[0:49]  that idea that oh you said this at one point but why has why have the recommendations changed and that's because now we're operating on a different body of evidence you know than we did I don't know however months or years ago and um and it's going to continue to be that way so we have to continue to reinforce these lessons and um and and I think there's a way to do it without overwhelming people with the nitty-gritty statistics and whatnot just like just to have a healthy dose of skepticism and to encourage people to think twice and you know confirm their sources and whatnot Austin man really excited to have you on

[1:42]  the show brother you know being able to just learn about your heart and hustle is like such an opportunity to just share the man the myth the legend the person who sits across from me so why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself well I am a gastroenterologist by training so a doctor um but a couple years ago I took the leap and also uh you know took on a corporate role at metronic as the chief medical officer for the endoscopy business there so now I juggle a full-time corporate job as well as a part-time you know job as a a practicing clinician so I get to experience Both Worlds which is which is nice I think they go hand inand obviously and then on top of all of that I'm pretty active on social media I've been doing this for over a decade on various platforms just connecting with

[2:29]  people people different audiences on different platforms and um you know all these different roles and hats that I wear ultimately led to other opportunities like writing a book as well and yeah so it's just been quite a journey and career thus far you know one of the things I think is important for us to talk about is you know the influence that we can create on social platforms like you said you've been engaging with people on multiple platforms but people often think that you blow up overnight on one platform and that's where a lot of your expertise and a lot of your Following comes from now from my personal research and what I've heard right you also blew up on Tik Tok so that's a big part of it what was the one platform that you think kind of helped you hone your skills to communicate ideas and really start engaging with like a broader audience wow that's a great question I would

[3:18]  probably have to say Tik Tok only because it's a video-based platform and and before Tik Tok I was on YouTube doing longer form video but Tik Tok it really is about capturing someone's attention atton and maintaining it for you know the very Shor attention span that we all have and so I had to con condense a really complex um you know thought into a very concise you know 15-second sound bite and and so I think that was probably the platform that helped me um communicate in that way the best and then other platforms you know I think it may have also helped in kind of crafting the captions that I have on Instagram and whatnot to be compelling in certain ways um so you know bits and pieces here or

[4:04]  there but at least for video format Tik Tok would be the one and video format was something that truly like exploded right during our lifetime cuz we saw like early YouTube stuff we saw early Facebook video we saw Instagram then they made the switch to go to reals right but that was really in kind of a reaction to the virality of short form video that kind of took over the world in the form of Tik Tok did you kind of think that it was going to be as big as it was when you started creating no I mean I you know have always been a fan of all forms of social media so even like when YouTube came out you know I was a fan of a lot of YouTubers I would watch all of their content and Tik Tok I didn't really know like where it was going and you know Tik Tok had originally uh come from musically you know which was very focused on like music and dance and and all the you know

[4:51]  fun parts of Tik Tok and not really used as a platform for education and granted my content ended up being like a a hybrid of entertainment and education but um I didn't expect it to blow up and I think part of the reason why it did was because it really coincided with the timing of the pandemic and so everyone was stuck at home everyone was spending a lot more time on their phones on the internet um so it kind of was the perfect storm that allowed this thing to all just Blossom which was the first piece of content if you even remember right where you saw that first piece of virality and you were like maybe wake up in the morning check the views and then all of a sudden you're like oh my goodness we're seeing a ton of traction here yeah I mean it's funny because I had to I actually went back and reviewed some of my old videos because when Tik

[5:38]  Tok was shut down for that very brief moment I wanted to go back and save whatever I could um and going looking back there was a moment I remember it was it had very little to do with healthc care but it was some sort of medically themed like Trend that I uh that I participated on um and uh and yeah that it was one of those moments where I went to bed woke up and suddenly there were you know thousands of comments and it had been shared on other platforms and it was a little bit wild but the one that I felt like actually had some actual impact was there was an educational video uh early on that I had done about an endoscopic weight loss procedure and it's one of those procedures that doesn't get much you know marketing or publicity um and

[6:26]  so not very many people are aware of it and it kind of went viral back then it was I think got maybe close to two million views which nowadays I don't think is that much but then for Tik Tok even back then relax relax relax you know mean that's crazy I mean I don't get I don't get millions of views nowadays anymore um it's really rare that I get something like that but um but yeah back then because it was even a smaller more focused Community I think it was uh much more impactful and people in the comment section were asking like where can I get this done and can you give me more information and I felt that single-handedly I was able to refer at least one person to every major academic center that was doing this procedure and that was one of those moments where I actually felt like oh

[7:12]  this is actually something that can drive people to you know basically access to care and um and months later I had some colleagues actually contact me and tell me that people had actually gotten that procedure done because of that Tik Tok so so yeah yeah it was pretty fulfilling to hear that kind of feedback what are some of those conversations right with a colleague who's like Hey listen somebody came through the front doors of the clinic right or the surgery center and it's like hey I'm going to get this surgery I'm interested in learning more okay how did you learn about this well there's this Doctor Who's on Tik Tok and he showed me this thing and like here's the video and then they reach out to you like what was that moment of validation really like yeah it was it I feel like CU for so many years a lot of my colleagues had sort of poo pooed the idea of social

[7:59]  media having any true impact um and granted there are platforms like X where a lot of folks are uh chatting you know a lot of doctors are chatting amongst themselves and educating one another and it's a forum for that sort of activity but to actually reach patients and have that um Drive where patients are going that was pretty you know new to me uh so yeah it felt really gratifying and of course I tried to replicate that like from there on out but it's been hard it's not B I feel like early on um it was again because of the pandemic everyone was not only at home and on their phones but also more interested in healthcare and interested in learning about it now it's a little bit uh more difficult because people you know um people want to go online and be

[8:46]  entertained and they don't necessarily want to just sit there and and learn and you know be be taught to so um so it has to be crafted in a certain way to to you know get the message across here's an interesting question for you and this comes from a podcast I was listening to the other day with an artist named Mike Posner yeah he's a former Duke Alum like me oh see there you go there's the connection okay so Mike Posner hops on a podcast called my first million um you should check it out if you've never heard of it and they're talking about the the fame and success that he saw like in a micro period of time writes his first song that thing goes double triple platinum right then for the rest of his career he's trying to write a followup to a double or a triple platinum record and it might go platinum but it wasn't triple platinum and so my

[9:35]  question for you is as a Creator right sometimes we have our moment in time where the audience is right the Tailwinds are behind us and we get a ton of views and we often see a lot of validation but also it's difficult not to kind of tie our selfworth into that so how have you kind of felt knowing that you had your moment in the Sun and maybe you were Icarus where you went a little close right and then you kind of had to settle back down how is that kind of like mental War Warfare G kind of been for you oh my gosh that's such a great question because it is so hard when a lot of my colleagues ask you know how do you do this and they get into it social media and and and to be able to sustain that that activity on social media it a lot of it is a mental game as you describe it trying to not get caught up in you know oh one day I'm not

[10:22]  getting views or I'm not getting people engaging on my content because it's going to EB and flow and and it on different platforms for me I've I've you know experienced that where I've had highs and I've had lows and I've come back and and so it it really depends um I kind of really had to ground myself in my purpose and what I'm doing here and it doesn't necessarily have to be always educational uh in in that sense I sometimes feel like it's just putting myself out there or sharing like my personal experience and and using it as a creative Outlet I think as long as I know that I'm doing it for me and and that I'm pleased with what I'm putting out there and not forcing content then I think I I'm happy with it and I I've just sort of grown to expect that maybe things bomb and things don't actually

[11:11]  you know get seen and that's okay and unfortunately I've approached social media in a way where I don't tie my uh income to my social media content which you know there are a lot of people out there who do that which is great like good for them but for me I think it was that was one Str y that I had to combat that was that if I had that sort of a a link I I feel like I would view social media very differently so at least it allows me to continue to just be authentic and objective and and not worry too much about you know an another impact on on that in addition to like the mental Warfare as you mentioned yeah I mean because you do have to establish those like those really rigid boundaries right if I were to look at Austin like as a pie right what percentage of you is

[12:00]  the CMO of metronic which which P percentage of the pie is you as a you know practicing Doc and Which percentage of the pi is kind of your current day perspective of the Creator who you are yeah and that's the thing is like I think people aren't gonna if you continue doing the same thing over and over it might work for short term but people are going to get bored and they want to see you evolve and you have to switch it up and and likewise as somebody who is constantly putting content out there I will get bored if I keep on doing the same thing over and over you know and and and I want to be able to not just talk about medicine or medical devices or or or whatever it is like I I that's what um I want it to be a reflection of who I am in totality and uh and hopefully the people who are

[12:48]  following me recognize that I'm multifaceted and I'm not just you know one note yeah in order to pull that off though you have to have such confidence in who you are as a person right you have to be grounded in who Austin truly is because a lot of I mean one of my favorite creators out there is a guy named Gary vaynerchuk goes by Gary v he's in New York right as well marketing Guru marketing Guru but what he talks about which is interesting he uses the example and I'm goingon to use like a different Persona he's like you know guy who's super fit girl who's super curvy right you guys are going to be on social media you're going to post a certain type of content and I get a lot of questions as Gary ve of like hey Gary I think I'm just kind of like done producing like the shirtless pictures or like me squatting in the gym or like with a bathing suit on and I want to share the side of me that is more you know I like actually drawing and I love

[13:36]  painting and I love reading books but when I post those things I don't get the engagement and so it's really tough for me to lean into that part of myself right that self-awareness is a big challenge for this generation everybody who's creating you know yeah but I've also seen and that's the thing is I draw on inspiration from other creators too and I've seen people pivot successfully as well which is really encouraging um you know I see people who have blown up on social media have been able to maintain their relevance because they continue switching it up um and again for me it's not about maintaining relevance it's just you know I I do it because I think it's fun and if people want to follow along I I hope that it's interesting to them and and I can continue engaging with them and maybe I can get something out of it by meeting more people um so that's kind of how I see it is like you know it's an

[14:26]  extension of who I am and I don't try to uh you know create like an internet Persona and only stick to one thing yeah well I want to talk about so we've created an audience right we talk about your passion for creating and also sharing who you are as a person but this also had a huge impact on kind of like trajectory of your professional career as well and if I'm not messing this up right you got a kind of a cold call right which was kind of about the opportunity at metronic and if you know anything about metronic this is not a small brand and so tell people a little bit about kind of that experience of you know you you maybe not being so interested and looking for the position but it came to you because of the audience that you built yeah it was uh yeah truly out of the blue and I think i' you know before my being approached for that role I was you know set for

[15:13]  this academic path through and through and again that was sort of my main focus so social media was I always treat it as my side gigs you know side project um and so I was very focused on you know my my core competencies and clinical work work and um you know over time I think not because I had that focus and I really cared a lot about that and you know made sure that I would get the best training possible and and had the you know network of key opinion leaders within my field um it ended up being that yeah my my former boss who approached me had been watching my career for a while saw that I was excelling kind of in the legitimate medical space and but yet I also had this kind of online identity was able to

[16:00]  communicate on social media and uh and he kind of wanted that younger energy and um and so he approached me with this role of chief medical officer which to your point like metronic is a is a brand and it's also like a a company that's not typically wouldn't that wouldn't typically take this approach um because really there aren't that many you know doctors out there who are academic and like researchers but also like doing this on the internet and and part of it is because it's such a huge you know time commitment um but yeah that's sort of it did lead to me getting this role and I've been able to Parlay it in different ways um in that role uh again a lot of it is communication um both

[16:47]  internally within metronic and also externally to you know the general public and educating the general public on what we're doing at the company the new technologies that we're coming out with um and uh and not just to the general public but also to like Physicians and um and so yeah it's been super exciting and I'm hoping to continue to pave the way to be able to leverage you know this sort of communication external facing uh you know presence um however I can I mean like you you really kind of like carved out your own role right within the organization and like you were such a unicorn right that you were undeniable that a brand that normally didn't move in this direction was like we need that I'm not even sure what that means yet but we know that that's going to bring value to the brand do you think that you

[17:34]  know the humanization if you will of the brand was one of the reasons why you've been able to be so successful is your ability to communicate and show that there's a person right on the other side of this brand that we all have heard of seen and experienced through you know different surgeries and stuff like that yeah I think so I mean I think that it's still a very much evolving space like I think you know I don't I'm not 100% convinced people know what to do with me yet um but I think you know Healthcare is such a heavily regulated um space and and I think when you don't have like a clinician a trained person kind of speaking to this in a way that resonates it's hard because it can be very nuanced right and if you have someone who's able to explain the complexities and talk through the Nuance of it then there's a

[18:22]  lot less kind of black and white and and that's the thing is like medicine and science isn't black or white and um and so you know I think maybe in some ways it was very rigid because there wasn't um a way to kind of talk through that nuance and now I'm able to do that a little more effectively um and you know people are much more informed these days and they're they're accessing information and and teaching themselves on the internet and I feel like we need to keep up with the times you know and um be able to meet people where they are you know I think it's it's really cool to recognize how you know sometimes life happens to people but some sometimes life or people happen to life and it

[19:11]  seems like you're one of those people who is happening to life and really kind of changing Industries cuz I mean I've spent quite some time on LinkedIn and stuff like that and why I was so intrigued with your story was I've seen people who work for Med device companies and things like that who try and build a brand right and unfortunately they were not received well well by their brand and sometimes it led to termination because it wasn't compliant in the ways in which they communicated they were sharing too much about themselves and I would I'm not going to say this in a negative way respectful of course but the Old Guard at some of these institutions was like there's not a place for that here and so recognizing that you've kind of broke the mold have you seen other metos or Austin who have come along that other organizations have tried to position in the same way that you know you've been so successful you know first of all that's a huge compliment to to talk about kind of

[19:59]  me and life and and that intersection but I feel um I don't know it's hard to say because I feel like I bring a certain diversity across different platforms that I haven't quite seen um I mean there are other doctors who are doing what I'm doing I consider them peers I talk to them all the time but none of them are truly embedded in the medical device space the way I am um but I do feel like you know there will be a day where there's going to be more people like this and um and so I I really look forward to that day I I think yeah it's uh it is a very challenging space and I think from a company standpoint I get why there's a lot of hesitation and skepticism about

[20:47]  like can we let somebody just talk freely the way I do online and and this wasn't something that was always I think comfortable um for metronic I think they also had to work with me and learn learn my my what I was about on online and um and I sort of also know my guardrails a little bit and and know that there are certain things that we need to watch out for that the FDA regulates and we want to be careful of certain things and um the last thing I want to do is to you know uh drive to to you know um put a stain on the brand and affect you know our uh you know our investor relationships and whatnot so I I I'm very wary of that whenever I'm speaking about something um but at the same time I yeah I do think

[21:34]  it's important for us to be there to educate and um and I think when I tell myself like what my purpose is on a platform like LinkedIn it's really I feel like we've been um working within silos for so long and part of what's slowing down Innovation is that we don't completely understand what each other are doing and don't necessarily appreciate what each other are doing and I can say that being a practicing doctor that before I joined metronic I had no idea what type of work and how what how it takes a village to you know basically bring a new technology to Market and and I want to be able to share that with um my peers as much as I can because with that appreciation I think comes greater

[22:22]  adoption and faster Innovation as a result so I think it all kind of um it it does um impact that at the end of the day it does I mean when I think about you and I'm saying this with all due respect of course right you are kind of like the Knight on the chessboard that is being moved ahead of its time to set up a move in the future you know what I mean and when we look back on these times Austin when we're you know in our 50s and our 60s and our 70s you're going to have a hell of a story to be able to share you know what I mean about the impact that you made on such a gigantic industry and you were one of those early movers and shakers that had the attention of the people who were you know in charge of these spaces to say hey we need to kind of get with the times which Healthcare has never really done and so it just makes you more of that unicorn you know what I mean well thank you yeah I I I'm hoping to and

[23:10]  obviously this isn't something that I'm doing alone I feel like there's a lot of other people who are trying to move the space forward and um yeah I feel like I have seen a shift over the years where you know it was um much more discouraged and ridiculed and you know people were scared of it but at the same time you see that like everyone is on social media whichever platform learning and I think about even you know things like Tik Tok a couple years ago when people are like oh it's a kids app people are just dancing on there well the truth is the millions hundreds of millions of people on that app if you're going to say they're all teenagers that's fine but they're going to be patients and customers and colleagues one day and you know that's why we have to tap into that

[23:58]  audience you know when we can I mean earlier in our conversation we were referencing Gary ve a little bit right and one of the saying that he says when you're being a really good marketer right you often influence the person who has influence over the decision maker so he said you know toy companies don't advertise to Mom and Dad on CNN but they advertise on Nickelodeon to get a kid excited so then daughter or son can pull on the shirt of mom and dad at the store and say hey I saw that toy I really want it it's really interesting to think about how we can strategically position content and media creation as a way to influence the future of Health Care purchases right if I'm 40 years old and I grew up watching Austin tell me about education because I'm getting value tment if you will then the first brand

[24:46]  that I'm going to think about is like hey when I'm talking my doc I'm really going to be looking for a metronic tool because that's on the front of my mind either consciously or subconsciously right once again playing chess when everybody else seems to be playing checkers yeah I can see that I mean think that there are especially for like the consumer facing products that you know that we have and um but you know for medical device company a lot of the products aren't consumer facing which is which is fine I still feel like social media at the end of the day like a lot of what I'm trying to do isn't just obviously to drive business but also just to kind of where I started on social media educating the general population about their health and you know the need to get screened for certain Cancers and and you know if that does benefit our our business like great but at the end of the day like people

[25:33]  need to get the care that they're supposed to be getting and you know the preventive care especially especially preventive care if they can get certain things done earlier it prevents a lot of Downstream cost to the overall health care system which as everyone knows is you know very uh expensive here in the US um so I think these things really matter it's ultimately like public health yeah I mean it's a a modernized version of Public Health you know what I mean one of the things that me and my company do is we use like SMS as an engagement strategy for patient engagement and the biggest thing that we always talk about is like we have to put good trusted information in front of where people are paying attention and if somebody's going to be on their phone all day right uh a conversation starter or an update or even appointment

[26:20]  reminder that comes via text that can get you to that preventive care appointment so you can catch something ahead of time so you can impact your life so you can drive more cost outle the health sector but you can also spend more time with your family if you get ahead of a diagnosis super important man but it all comes back to like the element of humanity and it's so cool to know that you're like tapped into that as well well and and truthfully when I first started as when I was a full-time clinician you know the thing is I was seeing already 10 plus years ago a lot of misinformation online so if we weren't present on social media people can run free saying whatever they want and not be checked by those of us actually have training yeah and so that's what that was you know I'm obviously I still see that you know rampant on social media but at least

[27:08]  there are there's a bigger voice now from the the trained medical world actually speaking out about you know or factchecking some of these things and there's a lot of headlines out there right like for better for worse that we um that you know we need to talk talk through a little bit more you know sometimes even the good headlines there's some Nuance to it that that people aren't aware of because they're not going to read the actual article and and so if we can quickly uh elaborate on that you know through a quick video then that could be super helpful I mean I think one of the concepts that I think is unique to our generation and everybody who's participating in this point in time in history is Authority is often confused for popularity right just because you get millions of views

[27:56]  doesn't mean that the medical advice that you're giving somebody right is the best advice for people to follow and it seems like we need to be able as a consumer of social media be able to sharpen that skill if you will of critical thinking to be able to do our own research and not take everything at face value just because it has 550,000 shares and 4 million likes or 4 million views on a video how do you kind of think about that that balancing game and where we're at between popularity and accountability oh my God auth yeah I mean it's a constant challenge because there are definitely a lot of creators out there who have huge huge followings who are necessarily considered the experts you know um the in within the field and I I think to your point about educating uh around critical thinking I think that's the key I think it's really

[28:43]  difficult um to teach through that nuance and um and part of the challenge you know even as a simple Concepts take it uh like for the pandemic right there's a lot of news that we we um saw changing over time and and naturally that's how science works it's very Dynamic you know sometimes the evidence changes and we're you know our practices change and but I think to the general public people were uncomfortable with that idea that oh you said this at one point but why has why have the recommendations changed and that's because now we're operating on a different body of evidence you know than we did I don't know how months or years ago and um and it's going to continue to be that way so we have to continue to

[29:30]  reinforce these lessons and um and and I think there's a way to do it without overwhelming people with the nitty-gritty statistics and whatnot just like just to have a healthy dose of skepticism and to encourage people to think twice and you know confirm their sources and whatnot yeah one of my favorite saying is new data equals new decisions right and I really want to hammer this home for anybody who's listening and watching today if you've ever had um a few too many right adult beverages and you wake up the next morning and you're not feeling too good you might be hung over people always say oh take another drink that's hair of the dog if you've ever heard I learned about this the other day where that phrase first came from was back in the day best medical practice was if you were to get bit by a stray dog you should track that

[30:18]  dog down take some of the hair of that dog and then stuff it into the wound and it would stop it from getting infected that is the hair of the dog that's where it comes from okay that's where it comes from I mean it's just I mean think about the logic right if we were to always say new data or not believe in new data equals new decisions people would still be trying to if you got bid by a dog track that dog down grab some hair stuff it into the wound because I don't want to get an infection it's like we need to think about spaces even like healthcare as being consistently Progressive right it's super super important yeah and and you know I think you know it's it's such a complex space like how do we get this message across in a way that's appealing and and factual and you know I think historically we've just done a really

[31:05]  bad job in medicine educating our communities and I feel like there's always been this idea of like we have to wear the white coat all the time and be you know look like an authority and I think like in this day and age people don't relate to that like if you're going to relay a certain message you have to be relatable and you have to meet people where they are once again and and you know speak to them not from necessarily an authority perspective but a friend a colleague you know someone who's going through a same the same thing and having the same questions and so that's the way I've tried to approach my content is like look I have some of the same doubts I have some of the same questions that you do and but this is the reason why I've come to my conclusion and and why maybe you can trust what I'm saying you know so here earlier um in our conversation you

[31:54]  talked a little bit about um you know for those few days right when Tik Tok disappeared right what do you think if you don't mind me asking your you know opinion because you have such a big audience on some of those platforms what happens if that space disappears right how are you going to handle Tik Tok being banned if it's not sold to you know an American entity and all the other kind of buzzwords and statements that we're hearing out there what's your opinion well I think luckily for me just like a financial portfolio I've Diversified my presence and I'm present on other platforms um so I it didn't concern me too much and I think the natural progression of of social media platforms over time is that people are going to gravitate towards other platforms anyway right like the platforms that we loved 10 years ago are not the necessarily the

[32:41]  same platforms that we use all the time today right like take Facebook or you know uh some of them have comeing gone Myspace you know Friendster things that don't even exist anymore friender so true yeah yeah and so I I feel like having seen the rise and fall of a lot of these platforms like Tik tok's not going to necessarily last forever either and we saw even in that brief moment of like 24 hours or however long it was there was a massive migration to red note you know and and so people will find a different place to establish themselves um and and the reason why I think I wasn't so concerned was the scare of Tik Tok being banned this wasn't even the first time like this was the first time that I think that we actually saw a shut down but there this scare had happened many times before in the past and so there were moments where

[33:28]  people were migrating to all sorts of platforms that I don't even know if people are still using today like Mastadon and you know remembered those days a couple years ago and um yeah you know and and and so and I've uh I gravitated towards some platforms and loved it for a moment and then like gone on to others and so and the thing is nowadays there just too many platforms right and each one will have its dedicated audience and as big as Tik Tok is that's not everyone is so just because you're not on that platform you don't like to communicate there doesn't mean you can't communicate elsewhere you know I I feel like if I wanted to I could maybe try out twitch and stream on Twitch or I could be more active on Blue Sky but I just there are only so many

[34:16]  hours in a day and I have to pick what what I you know devote my time to so I've kind of chosen which ones I I use the most I would love to I would love to see Austin on twitch right live streaming playing fortnite just putting people down and then giving like a clinical diagnosis of the injury that might have you know done them down I've thought about it but I think just the nature of twitch being a live streaming platform it just doesn't I just can't because I've I've got a day job and there's like I can't be on there for hours on end you know but kudos to the people who are doing that full-time because it's not an easy job dude not an easy job at all but these guys are putting in like hundreds and hundreds of hours of time behind the camera one of the scariest things and this is going to be interesting um there was a trend that was happening where they were taking um there was a trend with a whole bunch of streamers

[35:03]  who wear headphones all the time right and they were actually looking at like and you can tell me if this is real or not but this is this thing that I saw people who are wearing headphones for eight hours a day 10 hours a day streaming seven days a week they were finding that some of these guys were having like dents in their skull because of the consistent pressure of their headphones and so they take them off and then look at their head when it was shaved and they would have a little indention it's very similar to if you've seen um kind of like what the future hum going to look like because we sit at desks all day and everybody's on their devices and stuff like that you get like an elongated neck and like your fingers don't look proportional and like those type of things and like you have an extended pinky divot because you're holding your phone all the time what's kind of your opinion on like what the future of a human could look like if you've ever seen one of those memes I mean it's totally possible the dent I

[35:51]  definitely believe you know I mean I wear glasses and like I feel like there's a dent that's been created in the side of my head so that I totally buy I don't know about the elongated neck thing you know because because I don't know if that's really a favored trait that will like you know that will actually be something that gets passed down but um you know we'll see how we adapt to to to what you know all the technology that we have to interface with these days and I feel like it's only going to be more right like there's um if you think about where we are today I think about just the fact that we have a computer in our hands with a phone and um and so many things like you know grocery shopping or like getting Transportation like things like this

[36:38]  that you know at one point weren't imaginable to be just done at your fingertips are just so much easier I um hosted this guy on another podcast that I host with one of my buddies called the all Innovation podcast and we were talking to this guy CEO 10 time Inc 5000 CEO owns a company called called acuc code and he was telling us about where technology is today that people have a misconception right there's a company in um Denver Colorado called iterate AI that has found out how to basically turn an AI agent if you will into a small small enough data set that it can be uploaded and run on a processor from any type of device including security cameras from 2010 forward so we don't need Nvidia

[37:26]  chips but rather they can turn any security camera in a Walmart or anything else like that or an airport right that can then start doing things like okay I see Austin walking in to the uh to the airport as an example with his bag now the video camera security camera system is good enough to see when Austin puts his bag on the scale it weighs 49.9 pounds because you came in just below the little weight limit what I can now do is use the infrastructure of these cameras to track the bag throughout the entire distrib tion Center all the way until it gets to the plane so no longer in the future is there going to be a world where Austin checks a bag and then it doesn't make it there the plane will be delayed until the system can catch up and get Austin's bag there so we're talking about the adoption of new technology like AI being able to be

[38:14]  layered over old technology another crazy example a a town in Europe for the last six months or something like that has been doing pay by License Plate at a specific store brand have you heard of this no no no but I feel like there's something there's got to I feel like I've heard of something similar yeah so what they do is they put AI on all the security cameras once again as you walk through the store facial recognition I can tell that it's Austin I can look at and validate the plate that he got out of from his car in the parking lot oh yeah there's a pay method yeah in Asia like my parents live in Taiwan and when you go into parking structures you just yeah you just you know drive in drive out yeah and I'm like dude like to think about this stuff this seems like an ultra futuristic world but like that

[39:01]  stuff is here right now and so to kind of rally on that conversation what are you most excited about from like the world of innovation and everything else that's changing In Our Lifetime right now brother well I mean I'm biased because I work in healthcare and some of the things that you're describing are happening right now in healthcare and so and that's actually part of what drew me to this role at metronic was because we are at the Forefront of AI and Healthcare in some some ways and you know within my field of Gastrology you know we have ai applied to colonoscopy so to your point like an old procedure an established procedure with now an AI kind of overlay on it and it literally helps doctors be able to not miss certain pobs and um which are like pre-cancer risk growths and you know and the evidence has all you know basically

[39:50]  shown that it can you know improve detection so that's um pretty impactful and I think in the future right like I can Envision this world and there are a lot of different elements within Healthcare that a AI can be applied to um but you're you know a world where you're taking all of the data and insights um from the from lab tests from Imaging from procedures and the patients own medical history and their you know their experiences you know through multiple hospital stays and be able to aggregate that and predict maybe what the next you know next best step should be and that can help you know ensure that they get the best care possible so you know obviously like to actually execute on that is going to be I'm sure

[40:38]  a long road ahead but you know I think it's possible it's just going to take a lot of coordination yeah we uh I hosted a guy on the podcast once again the all Innovation podcast this guy named Philipe con and Philipe con is interesting because he was actually credited with actually building the first all-in-one camera phone solution and in 1997 he sent the first publicly shared picture of his daughter after she was born on a public network right and now he owns a company called I want to say it's full power AI That's strategically um actually worked and partnered with Temperpedic and so he's like we've got about 10 million I might be messing up the number but sleep sessions over the last like year that we're tracking and one of the things that we talked about which is interesting is if you have

[41:24]  compiled all that data right he said one thing that's interesting is people who have been being tracked in our system have had Strokes they've had heart attacks they've passed away in their sleep and so what we're looking to do is go back to Retro retroactively look at all the data and see if we can find Trends in their HRV in their sleep patterns in their breath rate in their heart rate while they're sleeping so we can then compile all that data and then combined it like you said with EHR data and everything else that comes from labs to be able to be a little bit more predictive in the future and I was like so cool so like they're envisioning like Dynamic mattress or something that can get you the best kind of sleep so there that's already out there I um have a system called Eight sleep which is a mattress pod so it's basically like a mattress sheet that you put over right it's got a whole bunch of sensors in it

[42:12]  it Heats and cools and there's an AI component called autopilot that adjusts at night time temperature-wise to keep you in REM sleep and help you sleep deeper so that data is constantly being fed to my phone every single day like last night you got an 85 your HRV was 117 your sleeping breath rate was you know 14. blah blah blah it's really interesting to see all the data that's just kind of flowing out of us as humans but in the future is going to be utilized to help us from like a humanistic Health perspective yeah that's like that's incredible I mean yeah I think down to the individual person or patient but also you know there's AI being developed to help you know optimize How We Do procedures to guide how we do things and you know with if you combine that with like robotics for instance like the prec the Precision

[43:00]  that you can achieve I think is going to also be super cool um yeah so I mean I'm just really excited about you know the direction things are going I feel like technology uh it's finally because of how computing power has evolved um it's finally at a point where we can apply Ai and machine learning to a lot of these um applications so I'm yeah I'm excited well brother I it's been such a blast having you on the podcast and it's so cool to be able to look back at this conversation that we've had in like 10 years and think about how much has changed man and I hope that you know we can stay connected I hope I can have you back on the show but it's been an absolute blast having you man thank you no it's it's so much fun chatting with you and I'm so excited about you know to your point like where things are going to be 10 years from now because if you think back 10 years from where we are

[43:49]  now right like it was a very different world and I can only imagine you know where we're going to go in the next 10 well I'm excited that you're a leader of the future and you're going to help Usher us into that new chapter man so I hope so that that's my sincere hope well there we go guys that's the podcast we'll catch you in the next one thank you