Adam Torres and Chia-Lin Simmons discuss LogicMark.
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Show Notes:
What gaps are the agetech and caregiver economy spaces missing in effective tech solutions for seniors and caregivers? In this episode, Adam Torres and Chia-Lin Simmons, CEO at LogicMark, explore how AI can best be integrated into tech for seniors to help them live healthier and still independent lives.
About Chia-Lin Simmons
Chia-Lin Simmons joined LogicMark (NASDAQ: LGMK) as CEO on June 14, 2021. Before LogicMark, Ms. Simmons was the CEO and Co-Founder of LookyLoo, a patent-pending AI social commerce company. She is active in the AI, automotive, mobility, digital media / music and e-commerce technology space as an executive, advisor and board member. Prior to LogicMark and LookyLoo, Ms. Simmons was an executive at a number of high visibility technology companies. She was the former Head of Global Partner Marketing for Google’s Google Play Music and the Google Play Store; former VP of Marketing & Content for Harman International / Samsung; former VP of Marketing and General Manager of Playphone North America; a senior business development executive at Time Warner/ AOL, as well as the former VP of Strategic Alliances at Audible / Amazon.
About LogicMark
LogicMark specializes in designing connected care devices ensuring help is always within reach during emergencies. They are committed to advancing safety and security, providing reliable 24/7 access to assistance for peace of mind.
Their mission is to develop state-of-the-art medical alerts and safety solutions for users to live securely and independently.
Established in 2006, their team comprises leading technologists with expertise in AI and machine learning.
LogicMark revolutionizes the care economy with innovative solutions, leveraging cutting-edge technology for personal safety.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s guest is Shailen Simmons, and she is CEO over at LogicMark.
Shailen, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Adam. It’s a pleasure to be here. All right. So we, got a whole lot to talk about today and we’re going to get into aging technology or age tech and really the integration of AI to build compassionate text. I think with our population aging in the United States and worldwide, I think this is going to be something that’s more and more on the Forefront of discussion, or at least it should be, especially the compassionate tech side of things.
So just to get us kicked off here, how did you get into this space? Like how did you age tech and just in general this, space? That’s a really great question. I think like a lot of us. The one in three millennials and a half of Gen Xers out there. I’m part of a sandwich generation, helping to take care of aging loved ones, as well as my own kids.
And so really stumbled upon this company because my own mother in law had an experience with a medical product that was just negative, sat down too quickly the AI was, the following fraud detection technology was not very accurate. And so it goes off really loud. In the middle of a ramen restaurant for lunch, and it screams out, Mrs.
Becker, are you okay? This very dignified woman was horrified. So everybody turned around like some kind of movie and stared at her. And I remember thinking somebody needs to do something about this and make these things better. And this is after my husband and I have done sort of a tremendous amount of research to find sort of the right product.
And what we found was that the industry was lacking, but we found what we’ve thought was the best in class at the time. And then I sort of filed it away at the back of my mind. And so when an opportunity came around to help pivot, logic mark it really fortuitous moment in time. . can you define, I mean, as we get further in this, what is compassionate tech to you?
What does that mean? Like the idea and the concept of creating compassionate tech? Yeah, that’s a really great question. I mean, to me, I’ve always been a human centric tech leader. And compassionate tech to me is very synonymous with sort of human centric technology, which means that you’re really building technology squarely, putting the user in the middle of everything you do, which sounds like, a crazy concept, right?
That that’s what. It’s almost like you’re thinking about it. Like, well, wait a minute, how did those fit? Right? Like, if you think about it for a second and then you go further and you think about how much technology is integrated into our life, then it makes sense. But if you just take it on face value, it’s like, huh?
Yeah, absolutely. And it really has a lot to do with sort of how the technology industry was built out. Right. You know, you have a lot of people and myself included. For much of my life I’ve been in tech and we get excited by really cool, innovative things. Now it’s very much, part of the sort of culture of technology to say, like really build amazing tech.
And then you’re trying to look for product market fit. Right. And that’s literally the ask any startup today. That’s what they’re doing, building great tech and then finding product market fit. And when we talk about compassionate technology or human centric technology, we’re really not actually doing it that way where we’re building really cool, cutting edge stuff, right?
And then finding people who could use it. It’s in rather in a verse, which is saying, what are the problems that we’re looking to solve? Not just today, but rather. Today and where we could foresee two, three, four years from now. So as a little bit of a futurist, the way that I always look at this is the following, which is, easier for people to understand.
I think like a little bit like Wayne Gretzky famously known for saying he doesn’t skate to where the puck is. He’s getting to where the puck will be. Right. And so my job is to figure out what are the problems that is cropping up or will be cropping up, right. And then how do we create a product that’s going to fit that problem?
And that need. And so we’re putting people at the center, their problems and their concerns and their issues and then building that technology to, help solve those issues that we foresee coming versus like, this is the coolest current I’ve ever seen. So I’m going to build it. And I want to see if we can find something to use it for.
Right? And it’s a simple thing, but ironically, this is not how the technology industry was built. what are some of the gaps that you’re seeing in the age tech marketplace or otherwise? What kind of gaps are you seeing that you’re trying help solve? Yeah, that’s a really great question.
I mean, one of the major things that we were trying to solve was, the idea of, are these things like items that basically the boomer generation is going to want to wear and why should they want to wear it? the entire sort of premise of, the medical alert product is, has been and continues to be a little bit of what I call the afterthought, , this has built on monitoring services and actually first came out of home securities companies.
They have people’s butts and seats monitoring their home. And this seemed like an opportune sort of product to slap something on your loved one and say, Hey, we’re monitoring your home. So we’ll monitor your grandparents as well. And, you know, it’s just, you know, one other revenue stream for my person sitting there, waiting around to see something bad happens.
Right. And that’s, that’s sort of like, it’s smart. And so the technology, the evolution of the items that you wear, and the concept of how to basically get better help to you when you need it is not the same. You have, for lack of a better word, if somebody broke into your home, it’s horrible.
And There’s some safety issues concerned here, but when it comes to health and safety for the aging population mm-hmm . There’s such a thing in the medical world called the golden Hour. Right? Which means that like if something happens to you, you really wanna get help within the first hour. ’cause your health outcome is much better when you get help within an hour.
The longer you wait, the worse your health outcome comes. Mm-hmm . And so how do you, like, if you don’t, of course you wanna get there and like. Protecting your home and your goods, but like it’s really pressing for, you know, the medical businesses. So you really want to have people want to wear the products, but they don’t build anything that people want to wear.
Not only is it unattractive, but because the fall detection is so poor from an algorithmic point of view, the AI algorithm is poor, then if you sit down too quickly like my mother in law, then it goes off and who wants to wear it because nobody wants to be embarrassed, right? Yeah. And so, It’s an afterthought for people.
And so the gap is there to basically make fault detection algorithms better. And I mean, better than I want today. People are like, oh, why don’t you use the iWatch? And my feedback’s like, one, the iWatch algorithm for fall detection isn’t very good. It’s strapped to your wrist, and it has, it uses an accelerometer, and it triggers a lot.
That’s why there was literally an article that I saw. It says my iWatch thinks I’m dead, and the whole article was about how a bunch of people went to a ski town, probably up here in Tahoe, probably, and people are skiing, and they were going down the hill, and they weren’t sort of feeling anything, but, when they were stopping in the bottom of the hill, it feels like a sudden sort of deceleration, and that actually triggers.
A fall detection, and it overwhelmed the town to like 9 1 1, so where actual health emergencies couldn’t go through. And so, to us, like, actually the concept of reactive technology and being, having better AI algorithms to really understand what’s a fall and what’s not a fall is huge. It’s huge.
And sometimes some things look like a fall. Like, you could be an active senior, going to do yoga, you drop really quickly to your knees and do the lotus pose, and that looks like a, fall, right? And then we say, Hey, you know, Mrs. Becker, are you okay? And you’re like, yeah, what can we yoga class, leave off.
And so every day I’m seeing the same pattern at 10 o’clock and you’re doing the lotus pose. Then maybe I’m learning as an algorithm that maybe you’re just an active yoga is doing senior at the yoga. Like, yeah. We should be smarter and we should learn your product. There was a such a thing in today’s world that we are bringing and thrive and like Arianna Huffington’s business.
And they’re talking about hyper personalized, care, right? Healthcare and monitoring. That’s what we’re providing today. Hyper personalized AI algorithms to care for your loved one. I love it. And, to think that it’s going to sound pretty nonsensical or obvious, but this all came from, I mean, it’s not lojack.
We’re not trying to, you know, your car, your home audio, you know what I mean? Like the, the original where it came from. So, it’s like, you want to have something that’s tailored. That’s good. That’s got to integrate well in your lifestyle and the way you explain it. I mean, makes total sense. You’re in your class.
Like, Oh, don’t go as soon as Lotus Pose happens. We know what’s about to happen. I’m laughing but of course that’s a very serious thing like it’s like you don’t want to you don’t want to have that inconvenience because you’re right if it keeps on triggering or something else is happening I’m not going to want to wait nobody’s going to want to you know what I mean like you don’t want it to inconvenience you you want it to be a benefit not to disturb right.
Absolutely. And, look, I mean, and if I was a senior aging today, I also want to be saying things like, look, I am not an infant. Like stop hovering over me like a helicopter, right? And so hover over your own children as a helicopter, right? Like I am your parent. You’re not my parent. And so how do you, as a sandwich generation person, yeah.
we call it actually providing a safety net to your loved ones, right? But our job is to be a helicopter, but to let your aging loved ones fly and be free. It’s the best time of their lives. They’re retired. They should be going out there, having fun, doing good. You want them to have. The safety net and you want to provide the safety net without being a helicopter and hovering.
So our job too is to provide for example in our freedom alert max product, right? we want to validate that there’s actually a fall and we want your family members, And maybe you have like three siblings and one lives in new jersey and one lives in california And so everybody knows mom had a fall i’m like, oh my god, what’s going on?
So our essay like our freedom alert max product allows you as a caregiver on your You know, phone out to say, Oh, my gosh, is this real? And because the trigger happened, you can actually keep in the video and say, Hey, mom, are you okay? You can see via video cam front camera back camera. Did she have a fall now?
You can’t just randomly pop in on your mom. Like you’re like, I want to check in on mom via the video. No, no You don’t want to do that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So we create a product again knowing that You want to be there if there’s an emergency, but knowing that the person being cared for doesn’t want to be spied upon.
And so again, when we talk about compassionate technology, we’re really focused on putting every player in the ecosystem here in mind to make sure that this is something that people want to do. Otherwise, like, how are you going to convince mom to wear a product that’s like, my kids are going to peep in randomly when I’m like, you know, it’s hard to going on a date.
Yeah. Yeah, we’re like yeah, get your camera off me. All right. Exactly. Exactly. And so our job is not to do that. Our job is to say, look, when the emergency buttons trigger or the fall detection triggers, then you’re allowed to look. And that’s the only time you can, right? It’s important. So, so this is already a robust platform, but like, any business, any tech, there’s always dreams.
There’s always thoughts going forward. I’m just curious. Give me some of the roadmap. What you can share, whether it’s in development goals, dreams, whatever, rollout, like, what’s next for this product that you can tell me. Sure, so obviously that you’re not going to have your whole tech team. Like, what did you say on mission matters podcast?
Exactly. Or actually, honestly, we’re a public company. So the writing down my butt. So just give me a little something for the audience. Come on, happy to look. We’re really been busy. It’s been a busy 3 and a half years. We’re a hardware only company. And now we’re a SAS, recurring billing company, right?
Hardware margin plus. Recurring SAS margin. That’s what the shareholders want to see been busy. we’ve got 19 plus patents out there. And so what we can probably share with you that’s been on a road map and we will look to launch this year is medicine reminder because ultimately at the end of the day, there’s 2 things that why we think that’s important because.
know, one, it is one of the number one things that as you’re aging, like a reminder to take pills is really important, but two is that one of the things, you know, we care about, and I talked a lot about reactive technology, like making sure it’s really a fall so that we can help you. But two is what we call predictive technology algorithms, which is to say, this hyper personalized care, when we see a shift in pattern and how you take your pills, like you have blood pressure pills and you don’t take them as often, like, and we’re The, the bumpiness of you not being metaherent, for example then it actually helps us to basically predict, you know, that you might have a higher probability for a fall.
So I want to get to the point it’s our dream and it’s our goal and it’s our mission to basically not just. be really quick and get you help that you need as quickly as possible, but actually trying if we can to like prevent the next fall or the first fall, right? By seeing the shifts in pattern, like how you’re sort of, you know, walking and are you, were you like a, you know, 10, 000 steps a day walker and suddenly you’re going down to five and like your blood pressure meds have been uneven and all of these things matter in terms of predicting a potential health issue.
And our job is not to say, this is what your health problem is. Our job is to say to your caregivers and for your caregivers to give this information to your doctor to say, like, dad has been like walking less and like he hasn’t been taking his pills as often, like, do you think that’s a problem?
And for us to be able to say, Hey, when we see this pattern for male, you know, 70, like in terms of these kinds of meds and all this kind of stuff. We, you know, this guy was like, you know, a year ahead of your dad with this pattern. And when we, when this pattern occurred three months later, he had a flaw. Mm.
Right. Yeah. So, and over time with the amount of data you have and the amount of people that use it and the learning side of things, like the predictive model should just get better and better and more and more accurate, right? Absolutely. And our job is, again, not to like, we really care about privacy. We both are know on the ground up so that we’re not actually sharing like the actual data.
Like I don’t, you know, I don’t need to know maybe that your blood pressure is 160 because you’re just, Your team is losing in the NFL, like you’re angry all the time, like your blood pressure is like 160. I actually don’t need to know that it’s 160, but what I do need to know is that you’ve habitually been, okay, but you’ve been seeing spikes, right?
And the spike has continued. And so that edge, like, so our interest is like that, that data is protected for you, but we’re seeing what we’re hearing about is sort of differentiated pattern. Recognition and then taking that pattern that you have that’s hyper personalized to you and then looking at an aggregate to other digital terms within our ecosystem with similar profiles and say, do we see your pattern matching to any aggregate larger pattern in this cohort?
And if we see, like, what that behavior looks like, that there is potential health, like falls, we care about falls, right? So, like, if falls are occurring, then, you know, from this pattern, then we actually can give notification. Because then our job is not to say, look, this is what you should do.
We’re saying, we’re seeing sort of Some concerning patterns that you should take and this is when compared to the sort of aging cohort that you’re a part of. This is what we’ve seen in aggregate and that is actually good for the doctors to be able to see too. And then they can make their medical diagnosis and allocate sort of like things that needs to be done.
And so, it’s what AI is amazingly good at is seeking patterns, extrapolating and modeling out patterns, which is what we’re doing. Wonderful. Shailen, this has been a lot of fun having you on the show today and learning more about LogicMark. I want to give you the opportunity to leave. How does my audience, how do they follow up?
How do they learn more? How do they connect? Yeah, thank you so much. They can find out more about us at www. logicmark. com. That’s l o g i c m a r k dot com. And you can find us on all of the socials including X, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more. Fantastic. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes, so you can just click on the links and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Shailen, again, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much, Adam.