← The Digital Executive
The Digital Executive
Joe Kiani on Transforming Health Through Technology and Personalized Nutrition | Ep 1056
00:09:10
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Joe Keani. Joe Keani is committed to transforming yesterday's impossibilities into today's realities. This is precisely what he accomplished at Massimo and continues to achieve at Willow Laboratories, which was founded in 1998. Joe Keani founded Mossimo in 1989, a global medical technology company renowned for non invasive patient monitoring technologies. Under his leadership as chairman and CEO, Massimo transformed from a garage startup into a publicly traded multi billion dollar enterprise. Listed on NASDAQ to name just one successful invention, Mossimo Signal Extraction Technology or SET is the primary pulse oximetry that that can be found at the top 10 hospitals in the United States and throughout the world. Today he is leading Willow Laboratories as the team prepares for the commercialization of several new groundbreaking technologies. Well, good afternoon, Joe. Welcome to the show.
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Thanks for having me.
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Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate that. Hailing out of the great Orange County, I spent some time there myself. I'm so jealous because the weather's always great today. Yesterday we've had like tornado type weather in Kansas City. If you have not been out here, I can tell you it's, it's something to experience.
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I've been there. It's beautiful. But yes, you do have your tornadoes.
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We do. We don't have earthquakes, but we do have tornadoes. So Joe, I'm going to jump right into your first question here. You've spent decades turning yesterday's impossibilities in today's realities. First with the pulse oximetry at Massimo and now with NUTU at Willow Labs. What gap in personal health management convinced you the world needed new to and how did your past experience shape the app's creation?
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There are many gaps, I think, starting with lack of knowledge about food. Most people don't know what foods are really bad and what foods are really good. Secondly, there is this unfortunate reactionary mindset that we have, all of us as people, that we want to get something done quick. But as you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. So the quick fixes end up not working, they're not sustainable. And then you know, to see people try with medication to do what we ought to do with just some knowledge and some discipline led me to think we needed something different. So new to which means nudge in Latin. It is a tool that if you use that score, you can see it. It looks like a plane. Not navigation, but knowing where you are height wise. If you don't go nose down or nose up, you're at zero. It's perfect. Why? Because that means you're eating right and you're exercising the right amount. And if you do that, you'll not only lose the weight you're trying to lose, hopefully you'll avoid getting diseases like type 2 diabetes.
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Thank you. There's so much to learn in that space, but I appreciate the story, and that's usually what kicks off a podcast conversation is, you know, Joe, you set out to make the world a better place, and knowing that there's a lack of knowledge and nutrition in foods, you aim to fill that gap. And, and I appreciate that. And I love the plan words there. Latin. I did a lot of Latin back in school. But yeah, nudge is a great name there, Joe. Nutu's heart is personalized. Nutu's score, a single number that blends metabolism, food choices, physical activity and sleep to nudge daily decisions. How did you build that metric and what behavioral science or clinical insights guided its design?
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Well, we worked with many experts, food scientists, nutritionists, endocrinologists, clinicians of all types to come up with something that not only was accurate, but was helpful and easy to use. So everything you said, from understanding a person's metabolism to tracking their sleep, because sleep changes your metabolism, to not just counting calories, but looking at the types of food you're eating, if they're rich in nutrition, if they're rich in protein, fibers, and also your exercise, you know, some people like exercising for an hour or two hours a day, some people don't. But finding what they're used to doing and just nudging them to do a little bit more of it. It's all of that coming together that we believe we can help people make small changes that between a little bit of a change with their eating, a little bit of change about their activity, and you can have a big change in their trajectory.
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B
That's awesome. And we all know that, you know, you make that little 1% or half a 1% change, as you get further down the plane, you'll actually see that you're making a big difference. And I like again, playing on words, nudging people to make small changes will improve their lives immensely in the long run. And of course, working with clinicians and dietitians and those people that have a lot of science based information makes a big difference when you're looking at improving people's lives across the globe. So thank you, Joe. The next question I have for you. The app offers a CDC aligned 12 month diabetes prevention program alongside a healthy living track. What real world outcomes are you seeing for users trying to reverse pre diabetes? And how do you define success beyond the scale?
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Well, the proof is in the pudding as they say. So the good news is first of all we have people that have been using it. They report not only weight loss but a drop into HBA1C which is a very important measure to if people are going to become diabetic or not. And I have to say the whole idea here is to not just go with something that even maybe 15 year old science has recommended, but going with what the latest data is showing. So I'll give you an example. There are these ideas that hey, you should not eat red meat. Well, there is one red meat that if you eat that actually is good for you, does the opposite. That's grass fed beef. If you eat grass fed beef grazed and finished on grass, it actually has more omega 3 than salmon or as much as omega 3 as wild salmon. So that is a great thing to help people not have inflammation. But if you actually eat corn fed, which I know there's a lot of in Kansas City, you actually will have inflammation. So it's like it's trying to get the latest data, not anecdotal but scientifically backed data to help people make their health better.
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Thank you, I appreciate that. I know you've put a lot into this. It's science backed, data driven, real people success stories. But I like how you just kind of teased apart a little bit because there's always these fad diets or these fad health things and people jump all over em. But if people follow companies and people like you that are really out for the benefit of humans in the world, you're doing this research and finding out what's really good as far as red meat versus vegetables and these sorts of things. So I appreciate the insights and I know my audience does. Joe, last question of the day. Looking ahead, what new capabilities or partnerships are you most excited to roll out and new to over the next 2012-18 months? And how will they further empower users to take charge of their health journey?
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Well, we want to hopefully not only attract a lot of companies that make products, wearables, whether it's CGM or it's health trackers, step trackers, so that it's more seamless, the entry of the exercise, but also working on languages. You know right now the languages that we support are English and Spanish. We want to bring out German, Italian, French, Arabic because we want to make this available to everyone in the world. And you said something I love. Brian, I appreciate you appreciating the lengths we're going to get the right, get it scientifically right, make it easy to use so that people don't have to recreate the vast amount of knowledge we've amassed over the last several years to create new to. And I like nothing more than if everyone on the planet used this to hopefully have not only longer lifespan but a longer health span.
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That's awesome. I appreciate you doing what you're doing and I want to highlight again, you're doing such great research to again, make the world a healthier place. And that's what we like to highlight on the podcast, is how people are making the world a better place. I think you're doing the right thing by attracting companies with trackable and wearable devices. I talk a lot about that on the podcast and, and of course, in many of my writings across the Internet. And then of course, we want to add more and more languages to get this out to the entire world. So you're on the right track. I think you have a great vision, Joe, and I just hope you keep doing that. Joe, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
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Well, Brian, thanks for having this program and encouraging people to make this world a little bit better. Thank you.
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Bye for now.