How Amazon and Starkey Teamed Up to Expand the Value of Hearing Aids

Peter Korn, Director of Accessibility for Amazon’s Devices organization, and Achin Bhowmik, Starkey’s Chief Technology Officer and EVP of Engineering, talk to Dave about the rapid pace of innovation specifically designed to help people with hearing loss. This includes their collaboration on Amazon’s Fire TV Cube, which enables it to stream exclusively to compatible Starkey hearing aids for private listening from favorite streaming services, apps, games, and even Alexa.

Link to full transcript

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Starkey Town Bites. I'm your host, Dave Fabry, Starkey's Chief Innovation Officer. Today we're going to take a deep dive into one of my very favorite topics, as you can tell that uh from my title, Innovation as Chief Innovation Officer. We have two outstanding guests today who are both experts in technology innovation and represent the growing partnership between Starkey, a leader in hearing technology, and Amazon, a leader in software and retail technology. Dr. Achen Bomek is the Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering here at Starkey, and Peter Korn is the Director of Accessibility for Amazon's devices organization. Achen and Peter, thank you both for joining on the Starkey Soundbites Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

It's my pleasure to join you. Thank you so much for having us.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Of course. And first things first, let's start by talking a little bit about the latest and greatest in new technology. Here at Starkey, we just launched new tech that we're very proud of.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah, it's very timely. We had uh over 200 audiologist professional customers on our site today, here here in our headquarters, and we had the privilege to introduce to them uh the new product family of products. Um, the Evolve AI, yet they're upgraded with a whole host of new technologies in there. And I'll take a minute or two to explain to your audience what they are. First and foremost, the primary function of hearing aids are to enhance sound and make the speech clearer than the noise around it, make it easier for people to communicate with each other. So along those lines, we have a relentless drive to improve sound quality, reduce noise, enhance speech. And along those, we announced this morning that the new device is going to cut down the noise energy by an additional 40% in challenging situations where you have wind noise when you're taking a walk outside, or there's machine noise like a vacuum cleaner or a truck passing by. So this is going to be a stunning boost in the user experience for the patient with uh 40% additional reduction in uh noise energy. We also announced uh our flagship technology, edge mode improvement. So now edge mode, which has been helping people with clarity of speech in noisy environments with a simple double tap. Uh, it's based on our edge AI technology. Now it's going to provide an additional speech clarity in transportation, such as car, train, planes. This is going to be immediately uh be noticed by people who struggle to understand conversation in noisy environments. We also have laid out a new technology, and that's completely hands-free experience when people are streaming phone calls, uh, that's Apple devices, uh, into the into the hearing aids. Now you don't have to, you can take the access the call, reject the call, or uh end the call directly from the from the hearing aids. And of course, we emphasize our amazing work with uh Team Amazon for uh for Fire TV uh streaming. It's going to be received very well, particularly as we uh get the messages out from both sides on this uh new capability in there. Uh we continue to work on healthable technology to keep people safe and detect if they fail and whole bunch of stuff. So really excited about it and see what else you want me to explain as we get along into this conversation, rather than taking all the time to it about raving about industry's best hearing aids.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Well, but thank you for that summary. I think for those people, the audiologists and dispensers that are listening, they'll want to know what the latest updates are, and they can go to Starkey.com to get more of that information. But now let's turn to the partnership that we have between Starkey and Amazon and uh and bring Peter into the conversation. So, first, Achen, talk a little bit about uh how long has this partnership been in place and um and what is involved before we do turn to Peter.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Uh thank you. So I'll I'll set the context and let Peter explain. We have had a uh pretty deep collaboration with uh with Amazon for many years now. Uh you know, when we introduced the wall's first multi-purpose hearing aid, the concept of extending the functionality of ENIA devices to go beyond amplifying sound, we partnered with Amazon for uh our tribe assistant technology, where you know you simply the patients could now double tap the hearing aids and ask any question and get the answers brought to them, the power of cloud, right? So that uh first step towards turning your hearing aids into your very own information assistant was a result of our collaboration with uh with Amazon. And then we have been working and exploring together for quite some time now on how do we extend the partnership to have the range of consumer devices that Amazon team continues to bring to market to the amazing area of ever expanding area of devices. How do we bring those devices to be helpful for our patients who are using our hearing aids? And I'll let Peter explain the specific uh product that we have together now that uh brings the value of this partnership to our patients.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Excellent. And before we do that, Peter, though, let's talk a little bit about your role in accessibility at Amazon. What how is it that you became interested in working specifically? Because we're we're uh deeply embedded with patients who have hearing loss and communication challenges. And as Achen said, first and foremost, we're always designing uh devices that will provide outstanding sound quality and speech intelligibility in every listening environment that they encounter. Speech and noise is often where people with hearing loss first encounter challenges related to communication. But the second, and I mean a close second, is often with regards to their exposure with media. Uh we've we've saved more than a few marriages by trying to improve the battle for the remote control on a television set between family members as uh if one has a hearing loss. But but how did you become involved with accessibility and uh and then dive in a little bit on the this next gen product, uh the Fire TV and things?

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Absolutely. So I I got my start uh 32 years ago, uh next February, so just after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I started at a small company making products for folks who are blind or low vision, uh moved from that uh into uh large enterprise companies, Sun, Oracle, and then uh not quite nine years ago, uh next month, uh, with Amazon. And at Amazon I lead our uh devices and services accessibility team in uh building uh year after year more ways for our customers with with vision loss, hearing loss, uh other disabilities, uh, so that they can uh not only use our products, but uh find them delightful uh to use. You know, our our philosophy is we don't want to simply meet some bare minimum of accessibility. We we feel that it's our job to earn the business to be worthy of the business of our customers with disabilities. And so we need to make things that delight them, that they come away with, you know, this is this is something that's really nice. And to do so at uh consumer electronics prices, prices that are affordable, as so many people uh with vision loss, with hearing loss aren't are underemployed. Um, and you know, all of us want our dollar to stretch further.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

That's outstanding. And I didn't realize that the length of your experience with this dates back to really the origins of the Americans with Disabilities Act. We had on a previous uh uh session of the Soundbites uh uh podcast, we had Richard Pimentel, who also was very instrumental and influential in the Americans with Disabilities Act. And it's kind of a nice uh uh happy intersection here of the way that you have uh continued over 32 years, and congratulations on that commitment. And also, I think another thing that a lot of people may or may not be familiar with is the strong comorbidity, particularly in the aging population, between those who have both hearing loss and visual impairment, and how challenging that can be when you have the combined uh impact of hearing uh and speech difficulties. So let's let's move specifically first into the the Fire TV and how that project came to be and why it is such a delightful uh experience to have those with hearing loss be able to get that crystal clear sound to their hearing instruments uh and enjoy media uh provided by Amazon.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

When I joined Amazon in September of 2013, there were several secret projects we were working on. Uh, one of those was Fire TV. And uh we really saw an opportunity as we moved you know even further into consumer electronics to have much broader reach uh than we did with you know a more typical tablet computer or something like that. And so we were very eager uh to really lean into that. And Fire TV when we launched it in I think 2014 uh was a was a really innovative product. It was the first television uh streaming player that you could activate by voice, right? You you picked up the remote, you pressed the mic button on it, and then you just asked for what you wanted. And the the convenience that that offered compared to navigating through an on-screen menu to slowly type in what you wanted to search for. Um, and so we we then uh took the screen reader that um we were building. Uh, we hired a fantastic uh engineer who is blind, uh, who wrote our our voice view screen reader, uh, and we brought that to Fire TV. And we we brought it there alongside uh Alexa, who then became part of the Fire TV experience almost almost immediately after we introduced the voice search. We introduced Alexa and Echo. And uh the ability to speak what you wanted and hear back through the screen reader what you were getting made for a revolutionary improvement for customers with disabilities. And then we added to that uh a magnifier, um a dedicated feature for customers with a narrow field of view to bring all the information together to them. We brought audio descriptions to Prime Video. We now have thousands of audio described titles uh that adds on to I think over 160,000 closed captioned titles. So, you know, we're really leaning into entertainment accessibility because entertainment is such a key part of our lives. The three E's, right? Education, employment, and entertainment.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Absolutely. And I can tell you, number one, I'm uh in addition to the partnership, I'm a huge fan and consumer of this as somebody that has had lifelong both front-of-the-ball and back of the eyeball issues. As soon as the voice command for Fire TV became available, I was using it. We unplugged from cable, and nothing against cable users, but some number of years ago. The one thing that cable TV, I think, has done and continues to do so well is they have a one interface uh for the UI across all of the different uh apps. And that's one thing that is complicated when you're having to navigate using the screen and the remote uh uh controls, but using the voice as a natural user interface. And then specifically with the Fire TV as somebody that did and does uh wear the devices and stream to them, I can tell you that it indeed was a delightful experience to be able to talk on the input side and then to be able to amplify appropriately for a person's hearing configuration, uh, effortlessly, if you will, and stream directly to our hearing instruments. So I think I I would echo everything you said, and Achen, I don't know if you have additional comments, but that combination of vision and hearing, the natural user interface without having to go to hear with your and and see or hear with your hands to be able to see with your eyes or use your mouth as a natural interface in language, and then to be able to process directly in the ears is really a game-changing experience.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Yeah, I'll add my bit to the human computer interface that Peter and you're talking about. Suddenly this is the future. It's one that you don't have to explain. The way that we talk to each other is via voice and just talk to each other. So this move from the traditional ways of having to press buttons and type out words of long words describing a movie title. It can be done, but nothing is more natural than simply picking up the technology and talking to it, right? This is going to just change how humans enjoy technology and interfaces with them. And the work that the team at Amazon are doing on uh AI technology that's making it possible is quite uh astonishing. Certainly it's benefiting our patients as well as our through our collaboration, our products, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yeah, and my my in-laws, I mean, you know, the the reality of the situation, like vision, hearing losses can strike at any point in life. It goes a cradle-to-grave issue. But the reality is, at least in our space, the older you are, the more likely you are to have a hearing loss, even um if you haven't previously. And so you don't have to be a rocket scientist or technophile in order to use the voice, as Achen said. And it's so it's embedding very sophisticated technology underneath the surface in a very easy human-machine interface. And my in-laws taught me how to use the voice interface on Fire, and then in turn, I was able to help them stream directly to their hearing aids so that they could watch uh on their app, their app-based TV as well. So, kudos to that. What do you see as the the horizons that we can talk about in terms of continuing this focus on accessibility for those with vision and or hearing impairments? And why partner with a hearing healthcare company from Amazon's side?

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Well, so you know, when when we think about it, uh over a billion people on the planet have disabilities. And specifically looking at hearing impairment, you know, some 460 million worldwide have disabling hearing loss. And hearing aids are are generally the best way for these folks to uh to address that loss. And so when we thought about the the footprint of our devices, we've sold over 150 million fire TV devices and and the importance of this customer group. It was just natural to reach out uh to Starkey and look to deepen our existing partnership and and go in this way. And um I really I really can't thank Starkey and the engineering team who I had the pleasure of working with enough. They they spent months with us uh tracking down issues that were impacting range. You know, Bluetooth low energy, right? It's it's low energy for a reason. It doesn't go that far, it's not designed to go that far. And then uh audio on top of low energy, which was again not part of the original design of low energy, adds additional challenges. And so it it took a lot of hard work and and work with our chip vendor to fix issues, issues on our end, issues all around, uh, to where we could uh stream you know from six feet away while uh while the TV is is at the wall and you're uh on the couch or you're in bed. Um and one of the other things that we did um is we we married Alexa and and the Echo product line with Fire TV in the Fire TV cube. So with Fire TV Cube, you don't even need to hold the microphone near your mouth to talk to your TV. Um you just say, Alexa, find Princess movies. Alexa, watch this show on Netflix. Um Alexa, do this or that. And the the work we did with with Starkey and to implement this interface is deep into the the low-level fire TV platform. So everything you listen to through Fire TV comes through your hearing aids, whether it's a movie or TV show from Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, Apple, uh, Amazon Music, uh, even talking to Alexa can be all through your hearing aids. So it just lifts the entire audio experience and delivers it to Starky hearing aids.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Yeah, I mean, it's it truly, as somebody that uses this on a daily basis, I can tell you that um it has been uh meeting your expectation for delight, as you say. And um, you know, when we think about it was really only now eight years ago that the first uh devices that were directly connecting hearing instruments to smartphones were possible through through those early days. And really the use, as you said, Bluetooth Low Energy is the platform we're using because our customers need all-day battery life and they need that um that convenience so that uh now when we have rechargeable uh batteries that they last all their waking hours, whether they're streaming andor combining that with environmental use. Um and um so that that platform really facilitates a democratization of the use of accessories, in that in the old days we had to have intermediary devices, it was hard to pair, and and the entire pairing process as well for people. If there are end users listening to this and wondering whether it's hard to set up, talk a little bit about that. And Achen, maybe you know, pipe in too if from the standpoint of the design, we needed to make this as uh the user interface, it's always we want it to be as simple but as elegant as possible.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

So uh that was one of the things that we really paid a lot of attention to, and uh on the on the user connection in our relationship with Starkey. Uh, Starkey staff and early uh alpha testers gave us a lot of great feedback on the importance of the ease of use in the pairing process, the ease of use in disconnecting, so that you can reconnect it to your phone and take a phone call that comes in while you're watching a show, uh disconnecting from the phone and then reconnecting with the fire TV. We've done a lot of work there. Um there's there's more we have in mind still. Uh and then the the the user community at Starkey through um uh through a group of uh actual Starkey customers who we reached out to in a clinical study uh also gave us uh really great feedback and helped iterate. And you know, at Amazon, one of our philosophies about accessibility is we want to ship the feature when it offers substantial value and then keep investing and make it better and better and better. Uh there's so many people, as you said, right? The remote fight at home, the volume fight, uh, who want this technology. We felt uh it was it was a strong V1 feature.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

And we look forward to continuing to improve it over time.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Yeah, it's I want to echo what uh Peter said first about just the amazing team collaboration that took us to this point.

unknown 22:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Uh between my team at Starkey and Peter's team across Amazon, working really hard to bring this feature in ways that despite limitations of current technology, uh that Peter explained very well about Bluetooth low energy having range issues and how many devices you can support, generally just one, right? But despite all of that, making it easy for customers to connect and then enjoy. I think we did an amazing job between the two teams to bring this feature. We're only getting positive feedback about it. And first, I hope Peter and I will come back and talk to you again, uh, to your audience about the amazing roadmap that we we have in mind. As the technology progresses, uh, this is only going to get better and more adopted. But out of the gate, I think the sound quality, we started the conversation with sound quality, just stunning feedback that you're getting about the quality of sound from Fire TV, stream directly into the hearing aids. Another point that uh Dave, you made the old days of clunky setup that would have required uh a relay device to be between the two, which is what our patients have been used to for a long time. Uh but with uh direct connectivity like this, it just changes the conversation and adoption of the technology. So I'm really happy with not just how detailed uh testings we have done between the two teams during the development process to get to the best user interface we could. And then the feedback that we're getting from the customers now and the work that you're doing together between the two teams on improving the technologies as the Bluetooth technology advances uh towards future iterations of it. I'm really excited about it.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Yeah, no question. And I think, as you mentioned, you know, V1, I love the approach of getting the product in the consumer's hands, start getting feedback on that for the number one important use case of them wanting to be able to stream television directly to their hearing aids with outstanding sound quality for news, music, movies, whatever media is you said, that it that's embedded in the fire and in the fire TV and making that as seamless a process as possible and look forward to in V2, V3, um, you know, in terms of making that. I think people take for granted the the handoffs that have to go and take place. Like you said, Peter, the the use case of getting a phone call or wanting to talk to uh input other questions and things. And there's a lot of handshaking that goes on, and that may seem, in the end, if it seems dead simple, it's likely that it's embedding a lot of sophisticated handshaking behavior. And I know that there was a lot of effort required on the parts of the teams on both sides to do that. And then looking at the way that we can turn this into a um uh V2, V3, more of a shared experience with family members and being able to have everyone in the room enjoying at their own level and then preserving and continuing to enhance that user experience for all family members moving forward. Um and I'm really excited about um what's in store for the future in this partnership. And I appreciate you both sharing where we are today. Um Achen or Peter, any advice for um professionals that might be um listening today who are looking at a future where maybe, you know, designated, like we currently, as you know, Achen, we have dedicated accessories that are used for a single purpose in a specific situation. I think looking at the way that we can partner with um with Alexa, with FIRE, with all of the different ways that we can interface into the cloud, as you said, and that we're already doing so with our virtual assistant. Um not having single purpose devices, but having the Amazon serve as the brain, if you will, and the and the air traffic controller for how to communicate in this fashion. Anything you can tease on?

SPEAKER_01 26:30

So I'm sorry, I'd maybe start and let Peter uh add to it from Amazon perspective. I think you brought about advice for professionals. So I would say uh it's you know, the our professionals, audiologists and ENT experts, for decades they have focused really hard on how to uh optimize the hearing experience by deep characterization of your hearing loss, the neurobiology of it, you know, measuring your uh audiogram and then tailoring and fitting the device in ways that really truly delivers the technology benefits to the patients. I believe this uh collaborative venture with Amazon brings about another dimension to for them to deliver value to the patients. And that is their you know their life within an ecosystem of technologies, right? Is there this uh provides an additional excitement uh about the professionals uh talking about new technology? The hearing aids still have a little bit of a stigma, right? Uh Peter mentioned nearly half a billion people uh are living with disabling hearing loss, yet the industry collectively ships only 18 to 20 million hearing aids a year around the world. So I think we can do a whole lot of good through these kind of collaborations to elevate the conversation about, you know, uh, first of all, the devices are not the old ugly designs. Uh and through these collaborations, we are expanding their value. Now it's no longer just hitting uh the people's conversation, but also streaming directly from your multimedia that you do for multiple hours a day. So I think I'll let Peter add to it, but I believe this where we started is the beginning, and where we're going to go to it's going to be increasing in terms of the value that you're going to bring to the professionals who are going to benefit from it as they interact with the patients and provide their service.

SPEAKER_02 28:26

It's it's it's such an exciting time, I think, to be serving customers with hearing loss. The the substantial technology advancements that we can now harness to meet customers' needs. Um, you know, affordability and mainstreaming of accessible technology is so much better now than even just a few years ago. Uh, customers don't have to give up so much as their hearing and and other facilities uh decline. Um and our work to make our first device, the the second edition Higher TVQ, work with Starkey Hearing Aids, is just the most recent facet of our deep commitment to serving customers with hearing loss. Um I think about the technologies that are in the labs right now around machine learning, around using multiple microphones for beam forming. I think about uh the uh increasing power, computing power that we can deliver on uh that just barely sips you know ergs from our batteries. Uh and and the increasing wireless technology. We we are going over a hundred megabits per second uh in the latest generations of Wi-Fi. And all of that is coming forward, miniaturization to where we can fit it in a tiny device on your ear, in your ear, lasting all day on a battery, and still connecting with the consumer devices uh all around you that are so critical for our lives.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Yeah, at every age uh we're we're connected deeply and continuously, kind of continuously connected. Last question for both of you. We're, you know, we're in this issue of and talking about innovation, obviously, and you're both leaders in technology and innovation. But the hearing aid industry, I think to be fair, 10 years ago, we were rather provincial as somebody that's been embedded in the hearing aid industry for nearly 40 years this year. We tended to always want to invent everything here and in our backyard. And I think one of the things that Achen really brought when he joined us is the importance of collaboration rather than always having to invent everything. Can both of you talk about maybe one lesson or um something you could share with the professionals or consumers listening to this about the benefits of collaboration on innovation?

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Um I'll go ahead and start. Um, you know, great ideas come from everywhere, not just your team, not just your customer, your company. Uh it's so important to work backwards from the customer, to work backwards from their needs, uh, to talk with people who are already serving those customers, addressing those needs. When you think deeply about how to solve the really hard problems, like great listening for all day long in noisy bars with your friends at, you know, and music in the background. These are the problems that that give rise to opportunities to make life-changing innovation and and life-changing difference in the world. Those are hard problems, they're hard to solve alone. And so collaboration is really key to solving lots of these. Excellent. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

So I'd I would I would just add to that, you know, but I would start with uh what Bill, our founder, constantly tells us all the time. Uh, alone, we cannot do much. Together, we can you know accomplish a whole bunch more and change the world. That is just today's world. If we are not collaborating, first of all, within organizations in a company, it's dead. And then between companies, if we don't collaborate, we're going to be very limited in new values we can bring to today's patient or customers' patients for us. So, and this is just an example of the you know, I this morning I talked to 200 customers about the sheer excitement on the transformational impact that's ahead of us with artificial intelligence. This requires collaboration on all fronts, starting with Peter explaining the challenges of um of the computing engine and connectivity of these devices. So we have to do 10x in terms of how much compute at the same level of power we can embed in the in the in the device in the ear alone. And then we have to look at connecting this with the most powerful computers in the cloud that companies such as Amazon brings to your fingertips. And they need to work together in the way that I can do real-time language translation in the cloud and bring the translated language privately into my ear. Just one of many examples where true collaborations between these powerhouses are needed in order to deliver completely new value that will just you know obsess our customers with our services and products. So word that I'm borrowing from J Bezos. Um, and you know, it's today. And our example is a good one where companies in their in their domains can reach out and collaborate with companies to benefit their patients. Here, our patients are benefiting from our collaboration with Amazon, and so Fire TV's customers would benefit from you know the Amazing new feature in our hearing. It's one of many things that we can do together. Thanks for that great question.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Well, I'm so grateful to both of you for uh the time today talking about these topics and also for the collaboration. And Peter, especially, especially coming from somebody um, you know, who's dedicated my career to audiology and to working with patients who have hearing loss, but then someone who uh suffers some uh some visual uh handicaps myself. I really appreciate the work that you're doing on behalf of people with disability for improving accessibility and uh and thank you for that effort and the work and the great strides that you've made. And uh to our listeners, we thank you uh for listening to this episode of Starky Soundbites. And if you enjoyed the conversation, please rate and review us on your preferred podcast platform uh and share with your friends and your networks. Uh you can also follow us and subscribe so that you don't miss a single episode. And once again, Peter Anachin, I really appreciate your taking the time today to be with us.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

It's been it's been my pleasure. This is this is one of the most enjoyable parts of my day is getting to talk with colleagues and to speak to customers.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Well, thank you for doing so and uh and have a good rest of your day.