Innovation Fika Episode 17 - Fredrik Ruben CEO Tobii Dynavox

So my story is I'm Frederick, I'm Swedish, I'm broadcasting from my home outside of Stockholm, and since about seven years I'm the CEO of the Swedish headquartered, worldwide international company Toby dynavox, which is one third but the majority part of the Swedish public listed company Toby. And what we do is we are the world leader in assistive technology for communication. So that means devices, software, and tools that Bridge the inability that some of our fellow friends on this face of the Earth cannot use, which means being able to communicate. So we're probably the most famous for making devices and computers that you can control with your eyes. So for someone who has a disability which is a motor disability, you're unable to control your limbs, you will more or less be able to do exactly what you and I can do, but you're using just the movement of your eyes. But a lot of our users have basic movement of their body, so they can use alternative access methods being joysticks or buttons and switches, etc. And then we have a segment of our users who actually have no physical disability. Let's say you're diagnosed with autism, etc., then you use normal touch interfaces. We are about 450 people in my team, very Global. Our by far biggest Market is in the US. That's also where I have the majority of my colleagues who are missing dearly. I haven't met them in a year.

60. You can get our devices in 60 countries, but we only have offices in seven.

Yeah, we've asked the question and it's a rhetorical question to some of our users who are confined to wheelchair. Okay, I have to take one thing away. I'll take your wheelchair away or I'll take your communication device away. Which one do you surrender? And they basically say, 'You can take my wheelchair, it doesn't matter to me. To get around it's so much less important for being who I am than ripping me of my ability to communicate.' And it's also so interesting because you saw in Lucy here, she lives in France. Lucy was the keynote speaker at women Intech in Stockholm last year. She's a super cool lady. But Lucy's family, of course, and we hear that so often from some of our users, you know, mothers or fathers. It's of course great for my kid, but it's such a massive thing for me because being a special needs parent is actually quite depressing sometimes because you feel so unable to do whatever you could do for your kid because you can't communicate. And having the ability to bridge that Gap actually makes a huge impact also for the families, the teachers, everybody around the users. So it's a massive, massive impact.

I think we have different perspectives. One is an internal perspective where we had the benefit of already before the pandemic being an international company. A fair amount of my colleagues actually work remote. I have probably 120 people in the US alone that basically have been and always have been working remote. So we already had the infrastructure, the ways of working to basically overnight shift to an entirely non-physical way of working, with the exception of I mean we make Hardware. So we have people who do repairs and ship these devices, and those kinds of things they obviously have to work. But then we've been quite diligent on safeguarding them so that our offices are a safe place for people who really have to go there. Then on the other hand, you have the interaction with our users. As you can imagine, has traditionally always been very much face to face, and that has been more or less impossible over the past 12 months. We are also ruled to a large degree by the local funding rules, etc. So the public insurance companies or the private insurance companies basically demand that it has to be a paper copy of an assessment protocol, etc. What has happened is that there's been a lot of innovation in that, so a lot of those assessments have been transitioned over to Zoom. But we also did assessments and having my colleagues meeting users in parking lots and public places and stuff like that. At the same time, the government in also quite strict countries such as Germany, but also in the US, have actually relaxed the rules so they accept tele-assessment or teletherapy as a way, and we will never go back. So it works. And then we have the funniest example of that is Australia is a fairly big market for us. And when I talked to my colleagues in Australia, 'Why are you keeping business up?' I said, 'Frederick, do you ever think we did face-to-face meetings before? It's not that we traveled out to our users.' Yeah right, it's like exactly. So doing stuff remote is there's no difference to that. So we've coped, but it's been challenging. I feel in particular I'm Swedish, I have three kids, our schools have been open throughout the pandemic so far. I'm blessed and I feel a lot for some of my colleagues who have to balance homeschooling and remote working and that kind of pressure. But how about you?

If you think about the product that we do, which if you read some of the old lingo, they're called Speech generating devices, SGDs, and that's of course something which was innovated when it was really about a little box that synthesized speech for people who couldn't talk. But if you think about a device like ours, which looks like this today, it's an eye tracking enabled communication device. The most used features is of course Facebook, Netflix, everything. Being able to... your physical disability or your disability, I mean there's no limitation. And I think everybody has felt a little bit disabled to some degree now when we've been confined to our homes, and I think it's a Level Playing Field. Some of our users are extremely active on social media and has been for many many years. And one of the reasons why they are so is because on social media, there's no difference from Lucy and the kid with cerebral palsy and the other dude who sits there and they say the same things, nobody can see them, etc. It's a Level Playing Field. And that is going to be the norm. I mean it's Ready Player One but in a different universe. And I think I've done a lot of work with online communities, avatar based communities, and I've run a couple of big ones previously. And exactly what you're saying, where you level the playing field because everybody has this avatar and nobody knows where you are or what physical possibilities you do or do not have. It does level out definitely. It is actually quite existential. A fairly big user group of ours have the horrible... this is ALS. There's even an article in today's Expressen I noticed, I haven't read it frankly, but I saw that. And ALS is a condition that you know it could happen to anyone, you and me, and it slowly actually deprives you of every ability that your body has apart from your brain. However, it doesn't affect you cognitively. You're as smart, you're as funny, you're the same dude behind that facade even though your body isn't functioning. What happens with ALS is that your lungs get affected typically at some stage of the process, and at some point you need to get intubated, you need to get a tracheostomy basically, which is a hose that brings you oxygen straight into your lungs. But you do that once you do that, you will be rendered unable to talk. And there's actually a fair amount of people or users who say, 'I don't want to go through that, I'm done. I mean turn off the machine, I'm done. Because if I can't communicate, then the reason for me to live is gone.' What happens now is that through this technology, you can continue to communicate, you can continue who you are. And we have people who are literally just a brain that is being fed with oxygen and nutrition, and they are writing plays, they're writing books, they're being politically active. The physical body is just actually a hurdle, it doesn't add anything. It is quite existential when you think about that. The brain is intact, but this stuff is quite irrelevant for us.

Indeed, and that's what we're all about. We say that we empower people with disabilities to do what they once did, that's the people with ALS, the one who's been in a motorcycle accident, or never thought possible. That's the kid who gets born with a diagnosis and then the outer world says he or she will never be able to, and then put the label on unable. And we so fundamentally believe that thanks to this technology, and remember this technology hasn't existed for that long. A wheelchair or a crutch has existed for thousands of years, but... is asking us what is the most important to develop techniques for communication. No, yes, yeah. And it's... the technology that we have... hold on, I need to turn my phone off. We basically have a couple of layers into this. One is the software, the interaction software, and that software is dependent on who you are. So you have two distinct user groups: the so-called congenital users, that's a kid who was born with something and we need to help him or her to develop functional literacy, to go to school, to become someone. And then you have the other story like the ALS case where we just want to compensate for whatever you were able to do before. And then of course, as you can imagine, the software interaction for those types of products look very very different. You could have a simple communication board for someone who's not literate, but for you and me we just want to have a cursor so that we can run our computer, right. Then you have the access methods. Access method is about using your fingers, joysticks, your knee, to compensate for whatever. And then eye tracking comes in. We're right now experimenting a lot with brainwave interfaces, so you basically put some sort of brainwave sensors to be able to sense interaction. It still works, but it's in its infancy. And then you have Stephen Hawking, he had a cheek muscle sensor. What we want to do is to make sure that we have the rate go up to be faster because Stephen Hawking typed with one letter per minute, that's quite slow. You know, if some of you may have been to one of his sessions, it's a fairly slow conversation. Then we have with eye tracking, maybe if you have some movement in your body you could get up to 60-70 words per minute. And then you have someone like us who, depending on how fast typers we are, we type maybe 200 words a minute, and when we speak it's faster. So that's really what I want to nail, I want to get this rate of communication up because that's part of the normalcy, not having to kind of 'How are you?'

Yeah, so we've been working, one example is we're working with a burn wound clinic. So people who have burn wounds, typically they can't move their bodies. They've been burnt. And sometimes if you're a burn victim, maybe your lungs have been affected because you have been breathing toxic gases and stuff like that. But we have no clue whether this person is here or not. Are you able to hear me? Do you have any other conditions? And putting a device in front of you which is very simple, yes/no, or a picture of the body where do you have pain, is it in the knee or in the neck? Those things make a huge difference for the acute care. And it's also a psychological effect. We had one of the users who... he broke his neck in essence. There's actually a documentary on Swedish television about this gentleman, I think his name is Sebastian. And he had done his military service as a signalist, so he knew Morse code to communicate. He went into the emergency care, there is this nurse that comes talking to him, and he's trying to use his eyes to say 'I am fine.' And after two minutes she says he has something in his eye, and she gets a wet wipe to try to clean his eye. Imagine the frustration in your body when you're trying to say 'I am fine, it's just that my body isn't working' and it's interpreted as he has something in his eye, we need to clean it. I am amazing.

Sorry for interrupting, but I think that's exactly what we need. And this has nothing to do with commercial success for us. Our biggest challenge is that the awareness that this technology exists is so low, even among the people who work with us. And the devices are there, the technology is there, even the funding systems are there. So the laws and the regulations are typically in favor of the users. But the awareness that this technology even exists is beyond tiny. We think that we have about two percent penetration of the people who need this technology who actually get it. So that's my only ask from the world: just spread the word that there is technology out there that will not only make us more human, but it will also level the playing field for equality. Because when it comes to this, when it comes to communication and when it comes to actually brain to brain dialogue, we are equal. And I think that's a very, very interesting...

For having me. I haven't actually met for I don't know how many years.

Likewise, Donnie, thank you for having me.