What to Expect When You're Connecting
What to Expect When You're Connecting includes interviews with a wide range of industry subject matter experts who share their journey, advice, and the mistakes they've made along the way in IoT. If you're adding connectivity to your products for the first time or seeking to optimize and scale your existing connectivity operations – welcome to the conversation.
What to Expect When You're Connecting
How Product Design Influences User Adoption and Data Quality with Withings Health Solutions
In this episode of 'What to Expect When You're Connecting,' host Ryan Carlson sits down with Antoine Robillard, Vice President of Health Solutions at Withings. They discuss the power of design in healthcare devices, the evolution of connectivity from Wi-Fi to cellular for seamless patient care, and the importance of ease-of-use in driving user adoption and retention. Discover how Withings' consumer-centric approach has impacted millions of lives and what the future holds for connected health.
Welcome to what to expect when you're connecting a podcast for IOT professionals and the IOT curious who find themselves responsible for growing, executing, or educating others about the challenges with connecting products and services to the internet. You'll learn from industry experts who understand those challenges deeply and what they've done to overcome that. Now for your host, Ryan Carlson.
Ryan C:Today on what to expect when you're connecting we're with Antoine Robillard, who is the vice president of health solutions at Withings, which is a company providing global health solutions in a unique way, in that we usually think about health as a sterile, utilitarian set of, controls and wires and boxes and, it just does its job. at Withings, you guys have Watches and scales and blood pressure monitors and sleep mats and thermometers These are all products that we've all used in our own personal lives or even in some sort of clinical setting So nothing is new or novel about any of this as a matter of fact because nothing looks like it comes from a hospital It looks more like something you'd see in an Apple Store or even on the set of a Star Trek television show So before we get started into the technical aspects of these products, Antoine, what role do you see design playing in making healthcare products and home healthcare products at withings and what role have you had in seeing this process unfold at that company?
Antoine Robillard:It's funny you mentioned, Apple. You can actually find some of the Withings devices in, in every Apple store in the world. Design for us is a way to find your way into the daily routine of your users. And we see healthcare as having to be integrated into people's life. We think that, we shouldn't ask much of a user or a patient. We shouldn't ask them to change their habits. We need the tech to adapt to people's habit and not the other way around. And for that, design is critical. It's not the only critical part. Ease of use is extremely critical as well. But with design, that's how you find your way. That's how you design both hardware and experiences, that will entice people, that will motivate them to use the devices, that will motivate them to use them frequently, that will motivate them to use them in the long run, which is key to generate all this data that you need to have a holistic view of a patient's, or a user, data, over time. So yeah, we've, we spent a lot of effort on the design since the very first smart scale that we created in 2009. So in 2009, a group of engineers had this crazy idea of connecting a smart scale to internet. And back then they knew that, design was critical. And since then, we've created products that. Should fit people's life. We have watches that look like watches. Yeah, I would say very important.
Ryan C:One of our Reliability Engineers said that, if a Scan Watch Nova that came in black, ended up as on his wrist, he would feel very cool. Uh, the fit and finish of these products is really something else And, it's not even hyperbole by saying that they belong in an Apple store I'd imagine that you have material designers who are coming from the world of fashion or consumer design.
Antoine Robillard:We work with amazing people, both internally and externally. For our devices, designers that have been following us for 15 years, 16 years. So they know our attention to detail and our passion for this, which helps over time. And Nova is probably the accomplishment of years and years of design iterations.
Ryan C:what I find fascinating about things like technology in industries like healthcare is that it doesn't matter how good the sensors are. It doesn't matter how good the technology is, how good the reports are. If people aren't willing to adopt and use the product. Products that are difficult to use or require you to form entirely new habits are the hardest ones to adopt On this podcast. We reference a book called, enchanted objects on a regular basis. Are you familiar with that?
Antoine Robillard:Not yet, but probably my next read.
Ryan C:It's just it's a brilliant thesis around the qualities of products that like, why do they work? And. One of the, premises is that the best connected experiences are the ones you hardly even know are happening. And one example that they give is a connected umbrella. And the umbrella is one of those things that you're always facepalming like, Oh my gosh, had I known it was going to rain, I would have brought it with me. And so this connected umbrella, all it does is connect to a weather API. And it knows where you're located at any given time through, triangulation. And all it does is it's got a little blue led that just, it's a little ring that starts to spin when it detects in the forecast rain. And so you can see it on your way out the door. You're like, Oh, grab the umbrella. That's it. It's a behavior that we want. And adopting it is easy because we know the immediate outcome. Because you're in healthcare and you're a company with metrics, it's not just a consumer company. You're not just hoping to just sell widgets by appealing to people's need for fashion are there specific measurable outcomes that guides the business at withings is there a specific measurement that you're hoping from a product perspective to be influencing.
Antoine Robillard:It's an interesting question. What matters to us at the end of the day is how many people we've helped on their journey to better health. Today we've had about 15 million users, since the beginning of Withings. we have a consumer business where people require our devices to take care of themselves. To better understand how their weight is trending, how their blood pressure monitor is trending. They can share this data with their doctors if they want, then we have a healthcare business where it's more care team that will distribute these devices to patients to remotely monitor them, most of the time to remotely monitor chronic conditions. So we look at this too. We look really at how many lives we've impacted. And, more importantly, we look at what kind of data can we gather. You said that tech doesn't have to require people to change their habits. The book you mentioned, our founder could have written it probably is very into this mindset and actually if you step on the Withings scale you'll know that you have to take your umbrella because we show you the weather forecast because that's the idea here is. Provide value to the user in exchange for this, for stepping on that scale and give them something that will be helpful to them. So tech has to find its way into the daily routine of the patient
Ryan C:That's interesting. One of my questions that I was hoping to ask is, it's that creating value with connectivity is hard, whereas using connectivity to create a gimmick is easy. So since most of your products leverage connectivity, what value does connectivity create for your users, patients, and providers,
Antoine Robillard:All of it and all of our devices. So we don't have a device that is not connected. So again, we're back in 2009, 2009, we are what, iPhone 2, 3, the very beginning of the Internet that we that we know today. And our founders have this idea of connecting a smart scale to the Internet. They come from the telecom world, they come from, they invented a box, a Wi Fi box before and they realized by doing so, they realized that They had significantly impacted the life of their users. How did they realize this? After a few months having this product on the market, they started receiving messages saying, you've changed my life. And when you think of it, you change my life, selling a scale, you're like, it's a scale.
Ryan C:right.
Antoine Robillard:But, having this data, having this, having access to this data, allowed users to understand what was happening in their daily life. Allowed users to monitor the impact of every little action that they take every day. And take this extra step every day to to go in the right direction. People have stepped on scales forever. But who remembers your weight? Nobody, you never remember the exact number and we don't actually don't care. We shouldn't care about the number. What's important is the trend how you're trending is an indication on on how better you're getting or worse you're getting. And you will not know the trend if you can't see the trend. Your brain is not made to visualize a data point that you've had in the past that you won't remember. So for blood pressure monitor, for example, people have been writing their data forever on, on a little notepad, and then you arrive to see your doctor and you show pages and pages of data. Your brain is not made to understand this data and on top of it, as a patient, you can just cheat the data if you don't like the data that you're seeing at that time. So the connectivity allows to store all this, to bring this data to life in a way that is meaningful for the various stakeholders. It's meaningful for you as a user. It's meaningful for your care team, your doctors in a way to better care for you. If you think of it, the up until a few years ago, we used to rely on one measurement of blood pressure taken once a year at your cardiologist to adjust a year of medication.
Ryan C:Right.
Antoine Robillard:insane. And we all know that this specific measurement is not reliable. Because some people have a white coat hypertension. Some people have the opposite of white coat hypertension. So just the fact to see a doctor can have an impact on your blood pressure. But we used to use this single point of data to adjust your medication for the next year. Now you can,
Ryan C:people were similar to me in that when I would go and get my blood pressure and they tell me what it is, I'm like, so that's good, right? I don't know what those numbers, I still don't know what those numbers mean. And then they explain it. I'm like, okay, I'll totally remember the next time. I never remember. Every time. So that's good, right?
Antoine Robillard:On the device, you show a little green, a little yellow, a little red. That means something to the user, but that indication is not the most important is the trend. It allows the doctor to understand what happens outside of that six minute window you have with your doctor every year. And this cannot happen without connectivity. So we used to say that we were connected device company because, and Withings comes from wifi things historically. So that's connectivity is even in our name.
Ryan C:it's interesting we had Darvie Davenport, who runs the telemedicine for UAB on the podcast, and she was mentioning how, they put the scales and the blood pressure cuffs out, and they're serving incredibly rural, remote patients. So they come in for some sort of Procedure or a major problem, but then they're sent back out and she says that, the biggest challenge is people just fall through the cracks and it's the behaviors outside of the hospital when there isn't a care team there to, watch their weight because a drop in weight over a small period of time could be. A precursor of a greater health condition. The same thing with the fluctuations in blood pressure and can have a nurse practitioner call up and go, Hey, we, something, how have things been going? They don't even have to say something's wrong with your data. It's just how are things been going? And it's that preventative step that allows people to, instead of, once a year, making. Course corrections on medication when the reality is things are happening outside of the hospital. I never really thought about the Impact that taking your blood pressure in the hospital or in a clinical setting would have on someone's blood pressure Like my blood pressure probably goes up if I'm concerned about my health and so that whole process could be Just giving false elevated levels and masking what could be another challenge. My, my question with the idea of connectivity, what are some of the manual steps? So actually let's take a, I'm going to take one step back before we get into that. I would like to know what's your favorite product that Withings has. And then outside of that, yeah, let's start with that. What's your favorite product and why?
Antoine Robillard:personally, my favorite product is my, it's my sleep mat. It's fascinating what you see in the sleep. so first it's almost easy to use device in a way that you don't have anything to do. You just sleep on your bed. Yeah. So you set it up one time. And then that's it. I've had the same sleep mat for, I don't know, eight years, nine years. And so I have eight, nine years of, Continuous data through my night. And I love this product. So for ease of use, yes, but also for what it tells you about your health. Um, looking at your sleep cycles, looking at your heart rate at night is an extremely good indicator of your overall health. We're able to detect sleep apnea with this device in, in, in Europe, working on it in the U. S. But, so you can understand what's happening, you can see rise in, in, in conditions. So personally, I would say it's probably the, my most used device, but I'm biased. I use all of them all the time. I step on my scale probably too much. And yeah.
Ryan C:Is there too much stepping on the scale? If it's. If it's giving you like the weather, maybe you just want to know whether it's worth going outside.
Antoine Robillard:It depends. It depends off. Who you are, why you're here, why you're stepping on that scale. Yes, it can be too much. For some people, looking at your weight every day is a bad idea. And we actually have on our scale a mode where we don't show your weight.
Ryan C:Really? Okay.
Antoine Robillard:Bit odd we've developed that with Obesity Clinic, they have patients that need the help of care teams, that need to be monitored, but they don't want to face the mental aspect of seeing their weight every day, or every week, or whatever. So we've developed a specific mode in this case that you can enable where you step on the scale and we'll just send you motivational message. We just tell you congratulations for stepping on the scale. The data is here. We've captured the data. You as a user patient have access to the data when you want to face the data, but you don't have to see it when you step on the scale.
Ryan C:That's interesting. Cause I know that in the U S the insurance or payer CPT codes are used for getting reimbursement. So a health system like UAB will prescribe. Some of these devices and they have to send them out in home, but they won't get paid unless the adoption rate is high enough. I remember Darby was saying it's something like 18, you have to check in at least 18 times in a month in order to qualify for that CPG code. And so if it were something for an eating disorder or something along those lines, I can see how just having compliance is all that you're asking. But without having to cause people to face that triggering moment, which is all part of that vicious cycle in, in, in something like an eating disorder, I want to go back to the sleep map. One of the things that, so I looked at all the products and looked at all the pictures and planned a bunch of future purchases. The sleep map, the thing I thought was really cool is the, if this, then that integration. So I'm, like my number one favorite connected product. Is the Phillips hue light bulb. It's not only a single pixel browser, right? The color can have meaning, but it also can just set up cool mood lighting. And, you don't have to rewire things. So with the IFTTT implementation, are there any of the automation sequences? Do you leverage that in your personal life with sleep to turn the temperature down or set sleep lighting?
Antoine Robillard:Personally, I did that at the beginning, but I am, I'm not using it today. It's yeah. I think it appeals to the geekiest of us not to to, to everybody. And when we're talking about so you mentioned Darby at UAB, I'm if anybody's listening to this podcast, you should definitely listen to Darby's episode. What they're doing is absolutely amazing. In, in that setup when you think of a care team in the patient. the patient won't go and connect things to try to change the lights and Is too much for them.
Ryan C:So what is the manual step or gap that is being closed by you having a device that automatically connects? Because I know one of the things that distinguishes what you're doing is that, most of your devices, they don't require you to, have grandma or someone in a remote rural area. Assume one that they have internet and to have them, go connect it to their home wifi or tether it to a smartphone. It just connects to the internet. You've got talk to me about, was that an evolution? Is that something that is always been the case? Talk to me about the role of always on internet with cellular and how that impacts adoption and use of your products.
Antoine Robillard:It is an evolution and it's almost exclusively for our healthcare division. I think we have to take a step back here to understand the story of the connection. Yeah, if we think because this is In this pursuit of easy to use and beautiful design, this has been critical. First 10 years of WeThings, we are a consumer business. So we sell our devices to people like you and me, buying devices in the Apple Store, Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, everywhere in the world, to take better care of yourself. So at that time, you were a consumer, and now you're a consumer. You've acquired the device yourself. You understand what you're buying. It's written connected scale, so you understand that there's a connection element. And you have to set it up. So you download an app and you have to set up the device. Since the very first day of weaving, We chose Wi Fi. We offered Wi Fi and Bluetooth, but we chose Wi Fi. I actually don't believe in Bluetooth. Bluetooth is useful only for the devices that you wear on you at all time, because the other thing that you wear on you at all time is your phone to to do the connection. So we believed a lot in Wi Fi. Why? Because it's a one time setup and then you don't have to think about it. You don't have to have your phone nearby to sync, you don't have to open the app, you don't have to you just tap on the scale will connect to your Wi Fi and the data shows up in your app. And this is, when we look at retention curves, Wi Fi over Bluetooth, I was looking at this recently, at three years we have a five time higher retention on Wi Fi scales compared to Bluetooth scales. Five times.
Ryan C:any insights on to why that's the case?
Antoine Robillard:I think the scales are still being used, but we just don't know because they're not transmitting data. Because people don't have their phone nearby. A scale is in the bathroom most of the time. Not everybody goes to the bathroom with their phone. If you don't have the phone nearby the it will just not connect to the phone. The scale will not connect to your phone, the phone will not get the data and will not send the data to the cloud. So I'm quite convinced that these products are still being used, but they've lost the connectivity aspect. Why I'm convinced that they're still being used, because one of the, one of the proof point of weaving is our retention over time. I was looking at a scale that we launched about eight years ago, 60 percent of the scales that we've sold that year, so eight years ago, are still being used today.
Ryan C:really?
Antoine Robillard:I challenge you to think of one electronic device that you've had for eight years. Maybe your fridge. But, that's
Ryan C:Yeah, but that's, we're talking like major appliances at that point. Because that's interesting, because, with with Bluetooth, what I've found with devices that require Bluetooth pairing, where your phone is the gateway, is that every time a major operating system update comes through, you typically need to repair your devices. You change your phones. A lot of people change phones, one, two, four years, but it's usually in that Two to three year cycle, maybe even sooner if you're getting the cool deals through your carrier, which is going to require you to then repair, go through all your devices and repair them with all of the new Bluetooth. So that if I were making educated guesses based off of experience with prior products, your home wifi router, usually it's set it and forget it. And people don't make changes to that. You mean you can bring it with you when you move homes or change apartments that just comes with you and plug it into the new router and all your stuff knows where to connect. So from a consumer perspective for someone that is choosing to go out and buy a connected scale, it is a choice that they made knowing that it's one, as you mentioned, connected and they've probably a set up. Huge light bulbs and, have other connected products and in their home.
Antoine Robillard:Or they have somebody in the family that can help them set it up. They have, there's always somebody here. But when you're thinking about the healthcare setting, it's different. So you compare Wi Fi and Bluetooth. The installation is pretty much the same in terms of burden. Wi Fi is a bit more complex because you need to know your Wi Fi password. The installation in terms of burden is pretty much the same. Long term use, no debate. Bluetooth is complicated, Wi Fi nothing to do. But then when you move to a healthcare setting, when you move to a patient, when you move to somebody that has been invited by his care team, by his doctor to check frequently his blood pressure, her blood pressure, you can't have friction on this journey. People that are sick. Don't want to be reminded every day that they're sick first. And that's why design is important. You can have a piece of hospital home, but they also don't want to have to change their habits every day because of that. So the, for us the installation process in that setting is critical. This is where you take a risk of impacting the motivation of the patient. The patient comes home, With full of motivation after having talking to his doctor, receives the product that is clunky, has to download the lab, clunky to set up, have to find how to make it connected. Too risky. They'll drop. They just won't go through that. Not all of them, but part of them. And that's why we move in the healthcare setting to Cellular, to your point. Because Cellular removes this need. It removes a lot of things. It removes the need to have a phone. It removes the need to have Wi Fi. It removes the need to even understand everything that we're talking about here. Connectivity. It works thanks to Cellular. the same way than a dumb scale would work. I say dumb scale as opposed to a smart scale. So a scale that you've bought at the best and beyond or wherever back then that you used to use was a scale. You go, you buy the scale, you open the box, you step on it. That's, this is what people know. With a cellular scale, it's the same, but it's connected. The scale is pre associated to the patient, shows up at the doorstep, patient opens the box, step on the scale, doesn't have anything to do, doesn't need to know what is an iPhone, and the data flows to their car team. And that's the beauty. That's the important part. This is the this is why we moved to cellular for this healthcare setting, really in a way to remove friction and make it seamless.
Ryan C:When we were in New Orleans, there was a cardiologist that was explaining the use of remote patient monitoring when they would send people home. And the whole point is to prevent people from coming back into the hospital. And the statistic that really blew me away was when they used to send people home and they would send them home with iPads or their phones and the whole tethering process, and they had to have these multiple moving parts, the adoption rate, Was astronomically low and these people invariably from a patient outcomes perspective, kept finding themselves coming back into the hospital because they weren't providing the data that was needed. And these are people that are already sick. These are people who are already in recovery. And the last thing that they're trying to think about is tech support. And she had mentioned that it was a mid 80 percent adoption rate of using this remote patient monitoring tools. As soon as they just connected they sent them home and they just worked. And when you're talking about this idea of removing friction out of a user experience, I can't think of something more important for a company that is focused on health outcomes is, it's removing friction out of people's physical lives, but also just the, their recovery journey that they're undergoing as well. So if patients are using it. What feedback do you have from providers on this, prescribed remote patient toolkit that you offer? What is the feedback that you're getting from them and how is it making their job easier?
Antoine Robillard:It's making their job easier because they don't have to worry about the nitty gritty aspect of the device. You're from the hardware world, hardware is hard. Developing devices, developing experiences it's hard. It's an expertise. A care team shouldn't have to think about all this. What they want is data. They don't want to think about what happens for the data to show up, how to have to think about logistics, how to have to think about connectivity, user support, all this. The, our role at WeThinks is to enable them to do what they do best, which is taking care of their patients without having to worry about devices. And the feedback that we get it ranges from people extremely happy to people that tell us you've changed my life. because why do we change their life? Because they don't have to worry about logistics. Logistic, it's complicated as well. There's always a problem in logistics. They don't have to worry about logistics because we take care of that for them. They don't have to worry about the patient experience and the setup experience because we made it as easy as possible. And trust me, even if it's even when you don't have anything to do, you will still have people that have questions. Yeah. But we're here to answer these questions. So we make the partner experience easy. We make the patient experience easy. And we make it enticing for the patient to come back. The first step is the most complicated. That's why I mentioned the importance of the installation. But the first step is not enough. You have to make this step. Every day, every week, every other day, whatever your care team asks. And that's where the user experience becomes critical. That's where, that's why we have the weather forecast on the scale. That's why we show the weight trend. That's why we think of every little feature that will entice, motivate encourage the patient to, to come back every day. And only people that know, that do hardware know that this is hard. But it's necessary to enable care team. to take care of their patient without having to think about the tech. They shouldn't have to think about the tech. They should have to think about the data that shows up and how, what does it mean about their patient? So usually they're quite happy.
Ryan C:So I think about the Withings story and what you describe is there's the consumer side of the business. And then there's the, working with the hospitals and healthcare providers. I'm sensing, and maybe you could validate whether this is true or not. I know that it's not, you're not in this business just for the good of it. You're an actual business and I see a flywheel here where you have people who may have never had any sort of connected experience, they don't know what a Withings is, they're prescribed the scale due to some condition. They enjoy it enough where it's easy. It's helpful. Do you see this as. As healthy, happy patients potentially become healthy, happy future customers of other withings products. Is it intentional?
Antoine Robillard:intentional, I don't know.
Ryan C:Is it, or maybe it's just a happy outcome?
Antoine Robillard:It's probably a happy outcome, but it's even true with the devices that are being distributed. So the one thing that we did with our cellular devices that I don't think anybody does that in the market we've kept the Wi Fi and Bluetooth module in the device as well as a fallback. So it serves two purposes. Telco will tell you that they cover the entire country. It's not always 100 percent true. So there are places where there is no cellular connectivity. And there is nothing you can do about it. Even if you connect to a variety of networks, there are places where there is no cellular connectivity. So what do you do for these patients? They come back home they've seen their doctor, they've received their blood pressure, their scale, and It doesn't work. It doesn't send the data back. So intentionally we kept our wifi and Bluetooth module so that we have a backup. It requires a little bit of work from the patient. They have to download something, they have to pay it. But if they're motivated, they can stay in that, in their program. And the other objective of this fallback is at the end of the program. So you join UAB or any of our other partners, you receive this product from your doctors. At the end, what happens? If you think of cellular connected devices in the market today when it's the end of the program, usually whoever sent the device doesn't want to pay for cellular connectivity anymore. So they terminate it. And then you have a connected scale that is not connected. And most of the time that doesn't work. Keeping the Wi Fi and Bluetooth module allows us to convert these devices back into consumer mode. And if the patient wants it. And if their care team have allowed it, there's a lot of rules, but, um, they can just become a WeeThings user. They can download the WeeThings app, set up the device, just like if they had bought it at Best Buy and continue their journey with their devices. So yes, we have people that will discover WeeThings, but we also have people that will benefit from the devices that they got from their program in the long run.
Ryan C:One of the things that in healthcare becomes a major blocker is, the idea of friction on a care team or with providers and practitioners and the feedback that I've received over many years of building connected devices in healthcare is we don't need another portal to log into. What interaction does Withings have? When I, when we talk about electronic health record systems or EMS systems the systems that they're using, do you have teams working on integrations or piping any of that data directly into patient health records?
Antoine Robillard:Short answer is yes. Again, our role is to enable care teams or other people to care for other people. And for that it has to be frictionless. So it has to be integrated within whatever platform they're using. Some people have their own. Some people use an EHR. Some people use other things. Some people don't have anything and need a platform. And we can provide that as well. Otherwise we have, variety of different APIs to allow our partners to retrieve the data from the devices they've distributed to their patient in their own environment and bring into life the way they want.
Ryan C:I'd imagine you've got managed services companies that are responsible for distributing, provisioning, cleaning, or setting up and installing, instructing, and educating patients in hospitals. We heard story after story in New Orleans at that conference. It's not just with things sending the device to the patient, but there's, usually someone either coming to the hospital room right before discharge and saying, Hey, here you go. Here's your gift bag. And inside is your scale, or we can have this delivered to your home and. I heard that education was the number one differentiator on adoption rate, other than making sure that it's easy to use. But just that handoff of so many people just want that human touch to say, here's this device, here's the button you use to turn it on. Or this is how you do it. And so the easier. That companies like Withings can make it for the end patient, it's also that person who's, got a lot of other checks on the checklist that they need to mark off in order to get reimbursed or to make sure that they're following all the appropriate processes and procedures.
Antoine Robillard:I think it's true when the tech is complicated. So there are two elements to what you're saying. The handoff, the motivation the tech shouldn't be an impact to the motivation. But if, but when it is, when the tech is complicated, it requires this education. This is how your device will work, this is what you have to do, blah, blah, blah. And in this case, you need people, you need and it's costly to have people that, that do this education. When our partners work with us, they can focus their education and their motivation on engaging the patient, on motivating the patient to, to join this journey. They don't have to waste time about devices. Because again, you receive that scale at home, it works the same that the scale you've been stepping on for the past 10 years. 85 years and it's the same for the installation. You just have to open the box and step on it. So the and that's important because First care teams don't have much time Patients don't have much time can't absorb every information that you give them So you need to work so that care team can focus on what's important and what's important shouldn't be how to install a device It should be Why it's important to be in this program, why it's important to be compliant, why, how will the care team use the data that the patient generates. Those are the things that the patient needs to hear. They shouldn't need to hear. So you need to download the app, set up the Bluetooth, and it's too complicated for them.
Ryan C:I think anyone who is listening to this episode that first saw the, a clip on social media, the last two minutes of what you just said is probably what they heard. That's really inspiring. I think that it, we, when you're on the outside looking in, All of this stuff looks way easier than it actually is, right? Like small little design decisions, some of the smallest ones actually create the biggest impact, especially when you're thinking about the end user. And I think a great example of that, it was, and you're talking about someone with an eating disorder or obesity program, just eliminating the weight, but still allowing them to maintain compliance from a level of code. Okay. That is, a couple of lines of code to omit something on a display and align it to a checkbox in an administrative interface. Technically that is not complicated. But from a design perspective knowing to do that, and when, is, Demonstrating a level of thoughtfulness that I see a lot of engineering led companies fail to deliver versus what I'm seeing. Every time I look at it with things product is that it's a design led company where you're thinking about it from the perspective of how people use it. How they will see it, how they will perceive it and how they will adopt it. And it's not just, does it technically check the box of it gathers my weight and it sends it to my doctor? Because I know that we talked to, I've talked to multiple Remote patient monitoring and telemedicine administrators in researching this connected health care space and that is arguably the number 1 bit of feedback that they have is that the design of the devices matters and the more complex or the more cost saving or cost friendly corners that are cut, they do make a big difference on. How people are viewing this tool in their recovery journey.
Antoine Robillard:And we see that a lot. First I'll come back to what you said about the, us hiding the weight on some people. Just so that our product and engineering team doesn't is not mad at me. You said that it's just a few lines of code.
Ryan C:It's a lot more than a couple of lines of code.
Antoine Robillard:You said it. Don't be mad at me. Joke aside You're right and what you just said is what we witness a lot. So we've seen over the past few years people coming to see us, looking for a scale any health devices and then choosing to go with the cheapest option. Usually the way this conversation ends, with this, at that time, prospect, is, no problem, go for it, we'll see you in two years, or we'll see you next year. And this is what happens every single time. And we have a lot of examples of people that went down the road of, I would say, the cheapest device possible, that forgot how important is the user experience. That forgot that it's critical, it's paramount to the success of the program. When you think of it, you can build the best remote patient monitoring program out there, the best coaching program. You can build the most amazing entertaining and enticing program for a patient. If you don't have data, the whole thing is useless. So if you don't have that patient that steps on the scale, that steps on the device, that sends the data and usually when you cut corner, this is what happens. So yes, you've saved a little bit of money at the onset by sending a cheapest device. But you won't get data. You will get less data. You will get less frequent data. You will not get the satisfaction and the, you will not deliver to your patient users the experience that your programs deserve and most of the time you will end up coming back to us or to other people that have this kind of devices but you most of the time you'll end up realizing the design is the centerpiece of the of this whole system.
Ryan C:It's the experience you get when you buy cheap shoes to my
Antoine Robillard:Yeah exactly.
Ryan C:don't want to wear them anymore. Yeah you paid 9 good for you. Lightning round question. What. Has been the hardest part about making connected products.
Antoine Robillard:making them easy. It's hard to make something easy.
Ryan C:Take me back to the day when you first decided to evaluate Soracom and tell me what happened.
Antoine Robillard:So to be to be fair, I was not the, I was not evaluating Soracom. I, we expressed a need which was we need cellular devices and our product team was in charge of looking at different options. And I think something that was important for us Several things were important, but one that was very important was the ability to connect to various networks. Without having to send different SIMs. Again, hardware is hard. The less SKU you can have, the happier everybody is in the company. So having one SKU that you ship, Not everywhere, but in many places is important and is important to be able to reflect the values challenges that you see in, in, in certain places. So in the U. S. there are places where one telco is much better than the other and the other way around. Not having to think about this when you ship the device is not only convenient, but important. Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan C:I remember when one of your customers I'd asked them, so do you remember when AT& T had the big outage or millions of people that were impacted? Did you receive any support calls or any issues? She says, No, come to think of it, not a single one. Okay. Neither did we, but it looks like everything worked as advertised. And that was a cool moment to understand that this idea of cross carrier fail over and, you know, multi carrier cellular is important when you need to remove the friction out of a process. You don't need humans intervening to either ship out a different SKU, as you'd mentioned. Oh, send out the AT& T SKU. Oh no. Actually, they're in Western Virginia. Send them the Verizon SKU, right? Who wants to, one, the overhead of juggling all of these different devices, but you want to be able to have one, One skew that can just be warehoused centrally and then provisioned in any of your major markets. From
Antoine Robillard:And when you think of it, the some of these devices are used to monitor patient that will need to go back to the ER if the device if something happens on their measurement. So the idea of the measurement not flowing back to the care team is not acceptable. And that's why we have fallbacks everywhere. So we have fallback in the cellular. If the cellular for some reason it's failing everywhere, we still have the Wi Fi, we still have the Bluetooth. So we'll have ways to make sure that this data goes back. It's too important.
Ryan C:perspective, is Withings a company, are you using like a AWS or Azure or some sort of larger redundant cloud system to manage this global empire of health devices?
Antoine Robillard:Most of the Empire is is managed by our team actually. Yeah. with a partner we've been working with forever. And some of it is on GCP. Depends on which business, which partner. But our platform team has done a very impressive job of being able to manage all these millions of devices that ping us every day. So every day we see that spike. Not at the same time because they're smart, but and that's again something around Bluetooth and Wi Fi, or cellular. A cellular device or a Wi Fi device will ping you every night. So every night the scale tells us I'm still here. Meaning that if there is no data, the care team knows that this is because the user didn't use the product. When you don't see data with a Bluetooth device, You don't know if this is it because they haven't used the device? Or is it because the data didn't flow? Meaning that you have to care for much more people. Like all the people that you don't see data, you have to call them to see what happens. Where all the other ones you can understand rapidly what's happening. So yeah, quite important this little thing that that we get every day.
Ryan C:It's impressive that you guys have built out your own private cloud infrastructure to manage all of this. That's a huge Herculean feat in this space. So congratulations on that. And so my hat off to your DevOps and engineering team for managing and hosting such a huge endeavor. That's, it's always impressive. And I can think about these tech support calls where if the keep alive signal is half the time, it's Oh, what's that? Mrs. Johnson? Oh, you, your grandson didn't pay your cellular bill. And so that's why your scale isn't connecting thinking through all of these different things that you might be troubleshooting. And so by eliminating that Bluetooth tether, or that little gateway situation with a device, I can only imagine that it is a Bluetooth tether. A whole different can of worms that you're setting aside for care teams that are just checking on patients to see if things are okay. What is Soracom to you?
Antoine Robillard:Soracom is the partner we count on to make sure that the data that we generate from the comfort of people's home goes where it needs to go. So for me, it's not about is it cellular? It's about data retrieval making sure that When we get the data, it goes where it needs to go in a timely manner. And Soracom is a partner that enables for cellular devices this connection, this part of the job. We like to say that healthcare is a team sport. Everybody has to play their part. Some people create the hardware and the experiences to motivate people to step on the product. Some other people will review this data from the from the patient and provide care to this patient. Some other people have to make sure that this data flows to where it has to be. And if we don't all work together cohesively and in the right order, at the end of the day, it's the patient that suffers. So it's important I've quoted only three of the actors, but there is much more. It takes a village to care for a patient. And we're just a little part. But that little part is important. And every little part is important.
Ryan C:We see IOT as a team sport as well. No one person alone can do it without All of the other taking a village to helping improve care quality for people in a remote and rural locations and difficult situations. And even people who already live in really nice, fancy smart homes, knowing that they're choosing to put home health devices in because of the fit and finish the user experience, and that it doesn't make a difference in their motivation to, to seek care. Their own improvements in their own health. Antoine Robillard of withings, thank you so much for sharing both the withing story and your experiences at a company that is truly making a difference in helping care teams, save lives and keep people out of the hospital and on a path to recovery.
Antoine Robillard:Thank you, Ryan. It was great to be here.
This has been another episode of What to Expect When You're Connecting. Until next time.
Jason:Is there any sort of statistic or number that within that context of adoption or impact that you've seen the products produce.
Antoine Robillard:For me, the most important one is retention. Because again when you want to help somebody in their health journey, you have to be here in the long term. You have to have data on the long term. And when you think that 60 percent of the scales that we've sold eight years ago are still being used. Our retention at one year I think is 95, at three years it's 85 I think. It's crazy. And it tells a lot about both the quality of the device and the impact it has on, on, on patients or users. Because they're still here, they're still using it, they're still seeing the value. So I think this is the, probably the KPI we are the most proud of. It shows that we've, we found our way into the daily routine of our users and we're here to help in the long run.
Ryan C:I think that's interesting to think of a company that makes money by selling products, retention, right? Like,
Jason:don't have to buy any more after that. it.
Ryan C:Yeah, we love it when someone's been using the same thing for eight years. it flies in the face of planned obsolescence,
Jason:the exact phrase I was going to use. That's Apple's favorite tool right there and you're able to circumnavigate that and have product that stands the test of time. Yes, that is remarkable. And yeah, something worth celebrating do you have any indication of What the future might hold short term, long term, whatever your plans may be, what the future might look like for you
Antoine Robillard:if you think of the story of Withings during the first 10 years, we've proven that we were able to find our way into the daily routine of users. The next five years, while continuing that consumer business, we've proven that we were able to find our way into the daily life of patients and to send this data back to care teams. But if you think of it it's easy data. It's not easy to get the data, but it's easy data, weight, blood pressure. So the next phase is now that we're here, now that we are in the daily life of patient, now that we have this connection with care teams, how can we leverage the simple gesture that is stepping on the scale to retrieve more and more data from that simple gesture to better inform care teams? about the state of health of their patient. And we've started a little bit already, so now you step on one of our cellular scale, you'll have your body composition, you'll have a score that tells you the risk of one of the biggest complications of diabetes. But this is just the beginning. Tomorrow we want to continue to simplify the life of care teams in the understanding of their patients without asking more to the patient. And that will be, that's, Withing's, future.
Thanks for watching!
