Apple Execs Talk Using AirPods Pro 2 As A Hearing Aid & How They Did It

What's up everybody? You know what, I had to bring the big gun special guest here because Apple just released, you know, you've heard me talk about just an incredible hearing experience. So you might recognize them from such keynotes as every single one, but I've got Sumbul Desai, VP of Health at Apple, and John Ternus, SVP of Hardware Engineering. Do you guys, you always make that so hard on us.

I like that, I like that. Sounds okay, sounds good. So thanks for making the time. You know, we're here to talk about just this incredible feat, and I'm excited about it. I told people right out of the fall event, although yes, the fall event was very, was everything iPhone, Apple Watch, I said the most important, the most impactful announcement from that was the hearing experience from AirPods because of just how they're going to change a lot of people's lives and it's hardware that they already have. So I was hoping that maybe you two could set the table because when someone hears this they may not know exactly what it is. So I'm hoping you can kind of break it down because there's a lot of parts of this, right?

And I just want to start by saying I think the point that John made, which is why this is truly impactful, is like we really take advantage of the fact that we work in this multidisciplinary, cross-collaboration company where we have experts. And so from a clinical standpoint, what we love is we work closely with engineering, we work with design, and you know, we're thinking software engineering and hardware engineering, and that we bring all of that together. And I think with our health features, it's what makes it, it's really the secret sauce that brings it together and we get to bring the science and deliver that to people in a really truly impactful way. And so with hearing, you know, if you think about it, what's so powerful about hearing is it's how we connect with each other and the world around us. And you know, we've really so often taken for granted, and potentially take for granted, our hearing, but also just accepted that your hearing just simply fades away over time, right? And so the fact is that more than a billion people have mild to moderate hearing loss and we were just so thrilled to be able to bring something that potentially could improve an individual's overall well-being and quality of life. You know, the science is definitive in showing that if you can actually improve someone's hearing, there's meaningful impact when it comes to their mental health, whether it's depression or social isolation or cognition. And when you think about that opportunity, about 75% of people that are diagnosed with hearing loss don't actually get the help they need. And so the opportunity to potentially fill that need is truly impactful and it's really what motivated a lot of our teams to do this work, which is so personal for many of us. And you know, what we thought about when we were designing the features is how do you build something that potentially needs to adapt to everyone's needs because everyone's different and it's a single product. So how do we do that? And also how do we potentially also think about the varying ages of people that may be using this feature and various, like people have different tech savviness. And so we wanted, really, we spent a lot of time thinking about how do we build something intuitive that really feels like an extension of someone's senses. And so, you know, obviously we rolled out three key features. So there's the hearing protection feature that really protects you on by default, protects your hearing. And you know, so many of us are exposed to loud noises every day and the fact that if we can just get ahead of the curve and start using something like hearing protection, potentially we can prolong someone's ability to hear in healthy ways for longer. There's the hearing test which enables individuals to take a hearing test that's clinically validated. It's basically validated against the gold standard of an audiogram which is done in an audiologist's office. And then there's the hearing assistance feature. So the fact that we could bring this suite of products together is really powerful and we're so excited about the potential impact.

Yeah, I mean it is really incredible. You know, I'm going to throw this out just as someone who's outside of what you all do and I do feel like maybe the Apple Watch might have been the shift where Apple kind of turned a little more health-centric because of this wearable. You started, you know, tracking some of these different metrics. I feel like that's where it started and then also, you know, later on the Apple Watch did have that ability to measure the decibel levels around you. Where did this idea, right, I know you guys are juggling a lot of apples at once, I had to say it, but what was the, you know, where's the genesis of this? What inspired this? Was it, you know, a feature that you're like, hmm, maybe we need to dig a little deeper on that? I'm just kind of curious how did this start?

Yeah, what I'll add to that is, and we have these conversations very often, we don't like to just throw technology at the wall and just do technology for technology's sake. We want to solve a problem and there is a meaningful problem to be solved here. And our technology uniquely was able to solve a problem in a differentiated way. And I think that's also when we look at, you know, like as John talked about, we've been talking about it for a while, but we also talked a lot about like what can we bring to the table to meaningfully solve this problem and deliver it in a way that is scientifically grounded, validated, and excellent. And so all of that plays a role when we make kind of decisions around the products we deliver, particularly in health as well, but that's across the board for all of our products.

Yeah, you know, with AirPods Pro 2, I think this is what also has, I guess you could say, surprised, I don't want to say surprised and delighted, but you know, the AirPods Pro 2 lineup, you guys have delivered massive software updates over the past two, two and a half years for free for people that are listening and watching, for free, right? This is the, that have literally transformed these in my ear. And you know, like we say the cliche, like take it up to another level, you have continued to take this up to another level. So I'm just kind of curious from a hardware standpoint, you can get a little nitty-gritty with us if you want to, John, but what's actually enabling you? Is it, I don't want to say like, oh, you guys are so good you made it so good a long time ago that you can just keep on stacking on this, but what is about the hardware, maybe some specifics that has allowed you to stack these features on top of each other without having people basically have to buy new AirPods?

You know, Sumbul, I had you up here because you're the VP of Health, but when before you came to Apple, forgive me if I'm not well versed in this, but I'm kind of curious what your experience was before Apple and maybe how the things that you as the team think of can be transformed because of basically the brain power that Apple has and someone in your position.

You know, it's amazing. I used to work, prior to coming to Apple, I was at Stanford. And so I spent a lot of time at Stanford thinking about the use of technology in improving healthcare. And I was at an academic center. And so we spend a lot of time, you know, you always assume that universities are where the best science happens. I think what's been most remarkable to me about the opportunity to be here and work with these amazing teams is the amount of science that goes into the work we do day-to-day is remarkable. And I would say on par, if not, my academic friends might be upset that I say this, but if on par or better than most academic centers. I mean, the amount of rigor that goes into the work we deliver. And I think one of the best things is we don't just talk about the science and deliver, you know, like ideas, we actually deliver it. And that's really powerful. And we do it in a way that's usable and simple to understand and think about the design and how it's intuitive for people. And that goes a long way because that's actually when people engage and use it and that's how you have meaningful change and impact happen in your health. And so that's probably been one of the most special things about coming from a different world and being able to bring that here and work with these amazing teams that are able to deliver these groundbreaking products.

Yeah, I mean, I was just kind of curious about that because I figured maybe you, I don't want to say you were an outsider, but outside of the Apple bubble, what it's like versus being inside of it and just kind of getting some of that insight is really cool. Sumbul, I also am curious because a lot of people when they hear this they're like, okay, how legit is this? And I'm just wondering if you can kind of break down when you say it's clinically validated, and we have time so you can talk and go into it, but what, there's clearly was a multi-step process and what test group A, test group B, can you kind of talk about how this was actually validated? Because it wasn't just like, oh, we're going to apply and do it. I mean, it took a lot of time to do this, right?

It did take a lot of time to do it. And, you know, the products are, maybe I'll just start from the regulatory side, is that it is a De Novo product. So what that means, it's the first of its kind. It's a software as a medical device. And so in order to deliver that, what that means is that we need to make sure that it is clinically safe, not going to cause harm, and actually meets kind of comparable levels to gold standard. And the way I always explain that is, when you think about the features, let's just break them up. Like the hearing test feature is its own regulated feature actually. So that has to be validated against a gold standard. So what does that mean? So pure tone audiometry and like the audiograms that are done in audiologist offices are what we use as gold standard to compare our hearing test to. So when we deliver a hearing test we need to make sure our results show that we are on par with what happens in a clinical audiologist's office. The reason that's important is, and we feel this from an Apple standpoint, is the fact that we are now democratizing the ability to take a test at home. We feel, and I particularly feel this way from a physician standpoint, is that we have to make sure we deliver it at even a higher bar than what you get when you go to a doctor's office because usually when you're going to a clinician's office you have that clinician there with you by your side. But now it's you interacting with this individually. So we always want to make sure that our validation from a scientific standpoint is hitting specifications that are basically showing that they're almost exactly on par. And that's what we hit from a validation standpoint on our hearing test. For the hearing aid feature we had to do the same thing. We had to validate the hearing aid feature to show that it improved hearing at the same decibel levels that it would do for individuals who have mild to moderate hearing loss that would be compared to like a traditional hearing aid. The other thing that we did, and John should talk about the tips, the different tips that we use because I think that plays a role in this, is, you know, when you get a hearing aid traditionally you have an audiologist actually help you fit the hearing aid. What we now are doing is you're doing it yourself. So we actually tested self-fitting, which means an individual putting in the hearing aid themselves compared to it being fit by an audiologist, and we actually were on par there as well, equivocal. So like all of that goes into the validation testing. And so what does that mean? We run studies, we run like human studies where we have people participate in the studies, we enroll them, they do a comparison using our device, using traditional, and then we show what the results are and we have to provide that to the FDA for our clearance or any regulatory body we're working with worldwide.

That's insane. I mean, thank you for that. It just gives me, as someone who, yes, we believe it's clinically validated, but even that was probably a truncated explanation of all the things that you have to do, right, to get it pushed through for all these different features.

Yeah, I'm saving you a lot of the detail. But John also talked about the four different tips because that's really important, that plays a big role in the self-fitting.

You know, the underrated thing about those tips is when you brought the extra small into the fold, I think that changed a lot of things for a lot of people. There's people that said they couldn't fit AirPods Pros in their ear and the extra small is what got them to be like, I can do this now.