Mobility is something that can make or break an individual.
In this episode, Ahmad Alghazi, founder and CEO of CAN Mobilities, talks about a smart walking cane that helps you to stay safe and mobile, quantifies your mobility, and unlocks different care programs for you. After witnessing how limited mobility impacted his grandmother’s quality of life and independence, Ahmad created the smart walking cane as a mobility solution for different populations with these types of conditions and challenges. The device has several integrated sensors that collect data to prevent falls, manage mobility-related chronic conditions, and/or monitor recovery after surgery or injury. He explains how the cane seeks to reduce the stigma of using one, improving safety, quantifying mobility through continuous gait monitoring, and providing classes fit for people’s needs based on their underlying medical conditions through different partnerships.
Tune in to this episode to learn about how CAN Mobilities is unlocking mobility solutions for many people!
FULL EPISODE
BTO_Ahmad Alghazi: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
BTO_Ahmad Alghazi: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Manny Fombu:
Welcome to Bite the Orange! Through our conversations, we create a roadmap for the future of health with the most impactful leaders in the space. This is your host, Dr. Manny Fombu. Let's make the future of healthcare a reality together.
Manny Fombu:
Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening. Today, we have an amazing guest with a very interesting background. And I found this company very interesting and I think all the listeners today will really, really enjoy learning about what he's doing and his reason why behind this. And we'll find out at the end if he decides to bite the orange at some point or not. But today we are hosting Ahmad Alghazi, the CEO of CAN Mobilities. And, how are you doing today, Ahmad?
Ahmad Alghazi:
I'm doing well, what about you?
Manny Fombu:
I'm doing fantastic, and so when I first came across your company, I was very curious. So tell me what exactly does CAN do? What's your company do?
Ahmad Alghazi:
Yeah, so we build mobility solutions to help people stay independent longer and make the caring process, if needed, more efficient. I came into this space over a decade ago after a personal story with my grandmother. I used to be very close to her growing up, so I saw her kind of falling and I start using a cane, then a walker, then a wheelchair. And I saw how her limited mobility impacted their life and quality of life and independence and how their care needs expanded when she needed a walker akin to a walker to a wheelchair. So I was very intrigued of how I can help my grandmother to stay more independent and help her with the day-to-day activities and things like that. And I remember during my undergrad I decided to create a device to help her in standing, sitting, and walking. So that's kind of how I got into it, and I won a scientific reality TV show called Stars of Science kind of creating that device. So that was very long time ago. And fast forward, I was doing something called Separate Ignite, and I was looking at that opportunity. I discovered there's even a way bigger opportunity and a bigger trend. Every day in America, there's 10,000 Americans turning into seniors. And if you look at also birth rates, the ... birth rates are declining. So we don't want to end up with a lot of seniors and no one to take care of them. And technology could solve that by doing two things. Number one, it helps people to stay independent longer. And number two, it makes the caring process more efficient. So instead of one human is taking care of another human, one human could take care of 10, 100, or 1000 more humans. And when we looked at the problem, we discovered that mobility is one of the main challenges that hinders people independence. So usually when people start losing independence or losing mobility, they start losing independence, they start by using a cane, then a walker, then a wheelchair. And their current needs expand exponentially between moving from a cane to a walker, and from a walker to a wheelchair.
Manny Fombu:
You know what's interesting, Ahmad, that you bring this up, my story on digital health is also about my grandmother, which is interesting.
Ahmad Alghazi:
Oh, really?
Manny Fombu:
Yeah, so my grandmother actually, and every talk I give, I start with my grandmother because I was very close to her as well, and she had heart failure, and she died from heart failure, which is my reason of actually getting to digital health. And I changed my career in medicine and the passion around it, right? So I really love the idea of seeing a problem that was a real-life story we cared about and going about to solve the problem, because many people that will be a target, customers have caregivers and family members that also care about them on that note, right? But there's something interesting here, is you just had to pick a cane, right? A cane is something, I know, I saw this on a website ... thank the caveman who discovered this 5000 years ago, right? And so the cane is a very unique kind of piece. What makes your cane different? How do you compare your cane from other canes? So why do you think, why was the cane that unique?
Ahmad Alghazi:
Yeah, yeah. This is exactly what I was telling you where we looked at, the whole industry is very under-innovated the cane since the caveman, as you mentioned, till today has been almost the same. And as humans, we still depend on it for years. So this device is very important for us as humans. And then we looked at the walker. The biggest innovation is tennis balls attached to the bottom of it, which is, I felt like there is maybe a better way. So we start asking people why you are using these devices. And we discovered there are three main categories of users. The first category are seniors who are worried about falling. And falling is a huge problem. It's a $50 Billion problem. When I first started the company, it was around 35. So it's growing rapidly and it's a huge pain point for insurance plans and other healthcare providers. And the second group of people who use these devices, they use it to manage chronic conditions related to their mobility. Think of Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis. But what we discovered, one of the most common chronic conditions in America is osteoarthritis. It's as big as diabetes. So if you have diabetes, you can quantify and manage your condition using glucose monitors and continuous glucose monitors like Livongo and Dexcom and all these companies, but if you have OA, you are left behind with a very primitive tool from the caveman era. You don't know if you're getting better or worse, like no one knows. And the third group, they use it to manage, or they use it to recover after a total surgery or an injury. Think of, there is about 1.7 million hip and knee replacements in America every year, or like after a stroke. Usually, people use these devices to recover. But the current problem is once you leave the hospital, it's a black box. No one knows how well is this recovery process going. So we start thinking how we can help these different groups with their underlying mobility conditions and challenges. And this is where the CAN Go idea, or first solution called CAN Go. We look at it as a three-layer solution, a smart walking cane that helps you to stay safe and mobile, quantifies your mobility and it unlocks different care programs to you. So how does that work? We thought, okay, how we can make the device, the cane, the safest possible device and also the coolest? And I'll tell you why it needs to be the coolest as well, but that's, we're the safest. So we thought about what are the all the safety features and sensors and advanced technologies in the 21st century we can add to make it the safest device. So started with like two-way voice call, calling and cellular connectivity and GPS location, and safety flashlight, and we added like ways for you to engage your family members and loved ones so you can get, they could get reports and so on. And not only that, we made it in a way that it gets safer over time. And what I mean by that, there is something called over-the-air updates. We collect data, we build algorithms, and we ship it to you over the air without the user needing to do anything, and this is very important for a specific demographic like the aging population.
Manny Fombu:
What I like about, what I really liked about it, just to add to what you said, is looking at our device, you could track step counts because usually when people see someone with a cane, the rationale is that you should not be active, right? The idea is that you have a cane, so your job is to sit down on the chair and just sit there and do absolutely nothing, right? And my mother also recently had spinal surgery and I watched her with a cane, actually, walk, right? And you have physical therapists come in, but every morning she would get up and actually walk with that stick. And here you're getting objective information, measurable information, how active someone is. Not only that, but I noticed that if you could also answer phone calls on the same cane, right? So the cane is a multi-device that fits within the workflow of the average flow of everyday humans, right? And it has very cool functionalities that kind of adapts to a certain population.
Ahmad Alghazi:
100%, yeah, so activity tracker and we made it extremely simple, the user experience, this is how I like to look at it. It's very sophisticated, and there's insane amount of technology inside custom-made sensors and other things. However, the design way of looking at it was how to make it as easy to use as a normal cane and make all the magic happens in the background. And that's kind of the hard things. People, when they look at the device now, they think it's cane, but they don't know the amount of technology inside. And that's exactly the goal of how to put a lot of technology, yet make it very simple and easy and people with any age group could use it and get the benefit out of it. This is for the safety and the technology on the side of making the device the coolest, in my opinion, is extremely important. But the cane used to be very fashion, prestige, status items in Europe, and then over the days, somehow it became very medical and it has a stigma attached to it.
Manny Fombu:
By the way, not only in Europe Ahmad, in Africa, where I'm from in Cameroon, like the Kings walk with sticks, right? And we like to dress up and we have a walking stick, so we walk right? And sometimes the walking stick could be a sword for dance and it could become ..., right? So certain things with a stick, a fashion kind of statement that was not based only on that, right? Which is actually ways to track activity in places. So it's kind of a cool way to bring things from our cultures back into healthcare and adapt it to something to make it actually cool and classy again.
Ahmad Alghazi:
100%, yeah, I 100% agree with you, and it has very deep benefits. Just removing the stigma and making people feel good about themselves and they take it outside and go out with it, it improves adoption and compliance, and that by itself reduces the risk of falling significantly or different other risks significantly. So this is a very, and improves your safety, for sure. So that's on the device level. On top of that, the second layer of the solution is we quantify your mobility, and the way we do that, we do it through continuous gate monitoring. Similar to continuous glucose monitors, we do continuous gate monitoring instead of, especially around gait speed. And instead of, gait speed, it's a clinical metric, usually, it's very relevant to the senior population or people with mobility issues. If you're younger, that doesn't have a lot of value to you. But currently, you could measure it at a doctor office by doing 6-minute walk this, or ten-meter walk this, the problem is you only do it when you see the doctor once or twice a year. Now, what if in a continuous passive way we can monitor that? And this is very important to quantify your mobility. And the third layer, we are partnering with the best people in the field where we unlock different care solutions based on your underlying medical conditions. So if you are worried about falling, for example, we offer you Tai Chi classes where you can take Tai Chi classes to improve your balance stability. So it becomes a vertically integrated solution where you can take classes, you can see the improvement through your gate and quantify that, the improvement, and then you stay safe and mobile at the same time. And eventually, we're going to take the same program and partner with other healthcare providers to create one for people with chronic conditions, people with recovering, and so on. So the way how I look at it is a device that unlocks different care solutions, similar to how Square unlocks financial solutions or how Roku unlocks streaming solutions, we want to unlock mobility solutions for different populations.
Manny Fombu:
Which is very interesting. I never actually looked at it from the perspective of the entire care kind of system around someone with a mobility issue, because you're not only measuring things, but you actually could help improve the patient's outcomes as well, right? Which is very interesting. So where are you calling ... now in terms of because to fit all this technology into a little cane, it's very sophisticated, right? And so it's not, I mean, computers today, I mean, you can make things fit into like an Apple Watch or things, but in a cane kind of perspective. So where are you manufacturing? Are you full-scale manufacturing? How, can people buy it today?
Ahmad Alghazi:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we just went out of stealth after a few years of R&D and people now could, we sold out our first production, small limited production run, people now could pre-order or reserve, stay in the waitlist and reserve their product will start shipping this fall. But the product has been tested with hundreds of customers and people. And this is how, the way how we develop the product, we involve the user from day one, literally from day one when we had like a stick and a Fitbit into it and to understand what the user would like to see. So it was a very long, delicate R&D process where we involved a lot of people in the whole ecosystem from the core is the user, the user and the people around them, family members or medical doctors or geriatricians or ortho doctors. So we kind of put a lot of extremely smart people, designers, scientists, and medical doctors, and engineers to build that product.
Manny Fombu:
So talking about Bite the Orange ... and the idea is a ... challenge innovation is always that bit of skin of that orange, right? Is that challenge implementation, what were the biggest challenges you've faced so far and you know, what has been the biggest challenge?
Ahmad Alghazi:
So yeah, so like any new technology, there is a whole care that you from a product point of view and from an adoption point of view, from a product point of view, usually new products, they become relatively more expensive because as you are, smaller quantities make it a little bit more expensive. And then the adoption and how the markets adopt the product. And over time, the unit economics goes down with scale and with more optimization and the adoption goes up as kind of early adopters and the whole curve adoption curve with very early adopter like innovators and then early adopters and so on. So I think this is what we are going through. We have a, like over what we expected, the amount of demand, we have over 12,000 people on a waitlist. It's a huge number. But yeah, now the question of how we can start filling that demand and scaling, oh, my goal is to make every device a smart device because one thing that people don't understand about what we do, we are a data company. So there is very hard problems in healthcare that is very, extremely complex problems that is almost impossible to solve. We have one of these problems is fall prediction, and it's extremely hard problem. And our approach, in my opinion, our approach could have a huge impact. So our approach of how we want to solve that is similar to the approach Tesla is taking with full self-driving, where we embedded all the sensors in the device and allowed all the sensors and these sensors, we added them after a very thorough scientific kind of looking at the scientific literature, what are the metrics that could have a strong correlation with like your risk of falling and then allowed to create a whole ecosystem where we could link this data and we created a system that allows us to label incidents automatically if it happens and it makes it almost the more people that use it, the more accurate it gets. And over time we can train different data sets and then push it to these devices. When I told you these devices get smarter over time through cellular connectivity or OTA, where the user doesn't need to do any action. So these devices get smarter over time.
Manny Fombu:
It might remind someone to get up and walk, right? If someone is like home and they have like a walker, much data that you have, you could remind them at certain points in time to create an alert, right, to say, Hey, get up and walk this many steps, coach them in the process, right?
Ahmad Alghazi:
Yeah, 100%, and we are creating different kind of ways gamification to make you get excited and about following different health, healthy choices and lifestyle choices and things like that.
Manny Fombu:
That is interesting. I could foresee us, seven years down the road having like a whole party and everyone comes to a stick. Everyone has a dress code, everyone has a dress code with a stick coming in. With that being said, I think the question a lot of audience members right now asking is, one is, I'd like to know who is your target? Like, who is your main sales audience or ideal customer that you like? That's one and two, what is the price point? If you can share.
Ahmad Alghazi:
So the ideal customer now, the current focus is anyone who wants to stay safe and stylish. There is the group of people who wants to be stylish and then, now our current focus is around people who want to have a comprehensive, the most comprehensive like end-to-end comprehensive solution to prevent a fall. So you could, if your loved one's having that problem and you want to help them stay safe and independent longer, or you are someone who is falling recently or worried about falling and you want the most comprehensive solution and a safety, kind of, safety features backed into one solution, I think that's the current target. And as we are moving, this is the initial market and then we're going to move, as I mentioned earlier, to different, by partnering with different healthcare providers to different kind of chronic conditions and acute conditions and recovery from procedures and so on.
Manny Fombu:
And so, one of the key things about this podcast is that I'm doing it, it's not just the idea of, you know, sometimes the stories about how much money companies raise and the companies are doing, right, which want to take a different approach here, is to support innovation. I love what you do and I think it's fantastic. But also idea is that people listening that love what you're doing, right, and they would like to join the mission and help support certain thesis, but it doesn't matter what is true, it's a role that they could play. But are there any specific needs that you have right now in terms of like a role, do you need like a designer, engineer, or you need some marketing pieces, but what do you need? How could people listening right now, they're looking for a career change or a move, help support this movement?
Ahmad Alghazi:
Yeah, so we are hiring so, any talented, passionate people about this space, please reach out to us, and would love to create our movement with you. And then if you are listening and you think your, one of your loved ones could benefit from this solution, I think you should definitely get one for them. And also, we would love to hear your feedback and anything we could improve on. We are very consumer-customer-focused. Anything we could improve on, we will listen and we'll act.
Manny Fombu:
I'm going to get one for myself and for my mother. I ... and I'm going to give me for her. What a mindful fashion, and my right knee hurts sometimes. And one for my mom, she had a spine, a piece, and she should walk with a stick. But she has a stigma in her head. She has a stigma in her head that old sick people, and she's not that old yet to walk with a stick, right? I'm going to get one, and I think that we could both track each other's activities based on the cane, right, and I think that's something I'll do. So what is the price point piece? Or this is going to have a huge 2000, 5000 people waitlist. We just got you on your website. How do we contact you? How do we order?
Ahmad Alghazi:
Yeah, you can go to CAN.co, C A N .co, this is where you can reserve your product now. We are, at the time of, we're recording this podcast or maybe we can give a special deal to your listeners.
Manny Fombu:
Perfect! Are we going to have, we're going to have that piece because we're going to get this transcribed and have the podcast hosted with a link specific to the website for people to get on the list, and we will have whatever code piece but also want to support you. It's not just the discount piece and I support you as I just want to make sure that you have the revenue to advance to where you want to go. But for everyone listening, being a supporter of the Bite the Orange Movement, we definitely have to support our friend, Ahmad, right, to make sure that we achieve this goal together. So yes, I'll definitely have the link available along with this podcast.
Ahmad Alghazi:
Yeah, appreciate that.
Manny Fombu:
Welcome to this, so now we'll let Ahmad go and think about it, and if you decide you want to join the movement, we'll probably get a pic of him biting the orange, right? And if anyone listens to what Ahmad said, and you believe in Ahmad's cause, for free bite the orange as well. And, you know, tag Ahmad on Twitter, tag Ahmad on LinkedIn. I know you've been active on LinkedIn as well, so you can share your different social media tags that people can follow you on.
Ahmad Alghazi:
Yeah. Twitter @AlGhazi, A L G H A Z I and yeah, on my LinkedIn you can find me with my name Ahmad Alghazi.
Manny Fombu:
Perfect, I will share this as well, in the description of the podcast, and I would like to invite you back again of course, Ahmad, in about 90 days or whatever, just, let's see where you are right then. See what more we can do to support your point going forward on that front.
Ahmad Alghazi:
That's amazing.
Manny Fombu:
Good, Thank you very much, my friend.
Ahmad Alghazi:
Very excited, congrats on the podcast, and I'm very excited to see it launching and listen to it.
Manny Fombu:
No, thanks for being on.
Manny Fombu:
Thank you for listening to Bite the Orange. If you want to change healthcare with us, please contact us at info@EmmanuelFombu.com, or you can visit us at EmmanuelFombu.com or BitetheOrange.com. If you liked this episode and want more information about us, you can also visit us at EmmanuelFombu.com.
Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.
Automatically convert your mp3 files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.
Sonix has many features that you'd love including automated subtitles, world-class support, automated translation, transcribe multiple languages, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.
About Ahmad Alghazi:
Ahmad Alghazi is the founder and CEO of CAN Mobilities, a digital health company that leverages the latest advances in hardware, software, and AI and unlocks mobility solutions to help people stay independent and make caregiving more efficient.
He is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience building hardware and software products and solutions and working at the intersection of business, engineering, and design. Ahmad is passionate about advancing human mobility and empowering independent living 119 Independence Drive | Menlo Park | CA 94025 | can.co through technology, holding numerous issued & pending patents in the Mobility Aid domain worldwide.
He has been featured in local and international media for his innovative products and companies and was selected as a winner of “Stars of Science” for the creation of GOOM, a mobility device that helps seniors to stand, sit and walk independently.
Ahmad holds a Master’s Degree in Engineering Management with a minor in Software Engineering from Santa Clara University and a BS in Mechanical Engineering. He is also part of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Ignite Program.
Things You’ll Learn:
Mobility is one of the main challenges that hinder people's independence.
As humans, we have used canes for mobility for thousands of years.
Falling is a 50 billion dollar problem, becoming a pain point for insurance companies and healthcare providers.
One of the most common chronic conditions in America is osteoarthritis, being as big as diabetes.
Ahmad won a scientific reality TV show called Stars of Science, creating what would evolve into the CAN Go smart walking cane.
The cane used to be a very fashionable, prestigious, and high-status item in Europe and Africa. Over time, it became medical, which created a stigma around it.
CAN offers a vertically integrated solution with the CAN Go where you can take classes, see the improvement through your gait measures, and stay safe and mobile simultaneously.
Currently, there are 12,000 people on a waitlist to acquire a CAN Go.