Developing a Chip for Electrophysiology featuring Benjamin de Jonge

Yeah, don't we? Don't we? Promoted panelist, hey, Raymond?

E.

On, bet you better.

Nope.

Hello!

Hi.

Hello! Everyone.

Hello! Hello!

Morning! Good morning!

Would you co host me? Sean.

Yes.

Good morning!

What insurance!

Morning.

Chadwick. I'm gonna be all euro, and assume that your name is Benjamin de Jong.

Yeah, that's right.

I even thought that was good.

A crass American. Here everyone is Benjamin de Jong.

I even taught Joe how to pronounce my name so.

I love to say hyphen.

Yeah.

Officially, you should say the younger. So it's like the young one, right? The meaning.

Younger.

You may be the youngest one on the call right now. Actually, how old are you, Benjamin?

39.

Anyone. You are the own.

Not even close.

Are you date twice, young.

Who knows?

If.

Kind of reminder to everyone that Sean decided that my son's 21st birthday was 2 weeks later than it was. So you can still come to 10 x. At the low, low price of 1695, and I am putting in the venmo that you can pay. Venmo I've discovered is a way for me to save thousands of dollars in paypal fees. Tell all your friends.

So we're gonna stay on.

Sorry.

We're gonna see Andre this year.

No.

Not you too? Now.

No, he's made it clear. That's a hard.

You're flattered you should be flattered. We want to see.

You made it clear. It's a hard no, he has. Yeah, I think.

He said.

Gonna have it in New Jersey.

Andre, you gonna do us like that again. You become the Mbg premium joke for your invasiveness. We don't even know if you're real.

I'm a bot, and I'm AI.

AI. Were a person it would look like Andre.

So I just sharing the agenda with you really quickly. That we're getting ready to launch. See if I can.

Love, your canva.

Are you seeing this.

Yeah.

Okay, so this is day one question is dinner on day one a dine around Joe.

Meaning. Everyone pays for themselves. And we go somewhere. It typically is.

Okay. And then

These prices, you can bet it is.

This is day 2. So what you can see is, that there are 16 workshops. There are about 8 speaker sessions. There are 2 panel discussions, and that each workshop is gonna have different roles assigned in it. Include, including an AI reporter, so that when the group is done meeting. They can report out to the rest of the room the highlights of their thing, and all of that information can be shared in writing after the fact. So we're gonna be doing things a little bit differently. But the idea was to involve as many people as possible. So by having workshop leaders, speakers.

and having everybody meet everybody in the room at 1 point or another by flowing through the different process.

Correct.

Rather than going and having a trade show booth, or, you know, pitching people or having oh, and there's also 15 slots available for spotlight session round one selected participants will share their projects, challenges and goals. In 5 min interviews with Joe or me.

Are those what I used to know as fast rounds.

Yes.

Okay.

We just changed the name and show the 15.

Folks.

15 approximately 15 slots available for that 16 workshop leader sessions available. And 8 speaking slots. So anyway, I will share this. We're just working on getting this all nailed down. But the and you can see it on the 10 x website. If you go to the agenda. There is a an abbreviated version of the thing here. and that's it for me. Sorry to hijack your call.

That's okay. I'll note that I've learned that Michelle can't make it. Because she'll be in the Netherlands. Luke. Will you see her there? I know she wrote you a note.

Michelle, who.

Lot.

Is going to be in the Netherlands.

And then taking a cruise.

Oh, well, somebody from our team will come.

But it's true, I said, if you're not coming, what's the whole point? And she said, actually. I'm sending Renee. She said, because I'm really excited about the changes that Shawn's making. Okay, Rene will be a 1st timer.

Wonderful.

Yeah, Luke, you are responsible for our young member. Oh, actually! Oh, sway! How old are you.

I am 39.

What's your birthday.

March 13.

Good.

Benjamin.

When.

When it.

When's your birthday?

7! 0, my God!

Why do you mind? Got it then? Then?

So he's lost it.

Yeah.

He's lost it by a week or so.

His name means young, but not the youngest anymore. What does Garza mean?

Garza is a bird, it's a heron you lost to a bird. Well.

Sorry I'm not supposed to call the guest of honor to show Ipad Hyben you are responsible for our young friend.

Yes.

You kindly let us know how you know him and why you said, Now, here's a guy you guys have to listen to.

I know the Benjamin because we were colleagues at Tmsi, and Tmsi was small company in in all those. and I was an engineer, and he was well, actually, Benjamin is an engineer as well. He's bio. how do you call it?

My medical engineer.

So he's graduated as well, but he was more in marketing and sales.

Yeah.

Yeah. And but we both learned a lot at Tmsi, because, what they do there is they measure electricity on the outside of the human body. and there's a lot to it. A lot of people try to simplify that engineers see a human body as a bag of salt water with resistance and capacitance on the outside, and there's a lot more to it. So we learned how to do proper physiological measurements. And then, after a while Babe and he went away to another former colleague from Tmsi, who thought, well, I know how the technique works, but

it would be so nice to integrate it into a single chip. So he went to a company that was called A. 2 M. Which is an acronym for Ids to market, I thought, and the company where Benjamin now works for is a spin off of i. 2 MI. 2 M. Is, is was sold a few years ago to Bosch for a lot of millions. So now they are on their own, and I think that Benjamin has something nice to say on how that journey went from scratch to try to sell a chip. And actually, I'm curious because we talk about a lot of things. But he never told me about these ideas of how those ideas will get to market.

So back in the right.

I'm curious to know if in that transition you got rich when it was bought, did you get new equity.

No, no, no, no, that was the So the whole story is that the I. 2 M. Was a is A is a semiconductor design house. It was founded by some former Philips Nxp. Guys. and they did the chip design for 3rd party. So for people who wanted to build a chip, let's say And there was a a a daughter of item which was called Item Medical, who did kind of design services for Medical Medical Device Company, so building wearable devices and measurements and amplifiers, and and all that that kind of stuff. And I was a daughter company. I wasn't

part of that of the not one of the founders of that that company. And during that well, those those design projects. and because Edward, who are who is the CTO. And a former colleague of Luke and and my and myself. He's a chip designer. And he really thought, Okay, this this amplifier stuff. It doesn't make sense to do all the analog hardware design magic on the board every every time again, every it's it's it's just too complicated for many people. and it makes devices really big and large and bulky and and and difficult to maintain. If you have to buy all the off, the shelf components, etcetera. So then, the idea was born to to well, to put it in a chip.

and then, thank you, was founded as a independent startup in 2021, yeah, 2021 with with some Pcs on board. So we got a little bit of money, and that's when I joined the company as a product product manager. I was doing marketing and sales at team as I but I wanted to go back a little bit into the technical stuff engineering stuff.

You'll appreciate this question. Help me understand who is your target? What is the benefit of what you're working on? And why should we believe that your idea is something that people should be paying attention to.

For the what we're building. Now. Yeah, you mean to the chip? Yeah. So

So who do you want to sell to.

Our our core. There are 2 industries we focus on. That's 1. 1 is the medical device industry, of course. because they can benefit of well innovating their medical devices, making the smaller etcetera. And the other one is the consumer consumer electronics, which is nowadays quite popular with all the sensors you have in your watching phone and whatnot.

Are you looking to sell in medical devices that you're looking to sell to manufacturers? And Andre, here is a contract manufacturer. So would you potentially. Wanna sell your chip and get him to begin to integrate it into devices that he's making.

Yeah, exactly that. So that those are the the customer profiles we are looking at. If you look at from a from a marketing perspective. So it's medical device manufacturers contract engineering companies and the customer.

Okay, that's good.

It's a different different niche.

Visualize a little bit. Can you give me an example of a product for which your chip would be ideally suited? Something familiar.

Think about a a hard monitoring holder kind of device. So the device that monitors your heart for 24 h, 84 h. Or 48 h. Let's see. you have to think about something like that which is well, rather big, and you can reduce it to maybe even a patch size device. That's that's that's the the thing you have to well, think about.

I approach this as the lowest common denominator person, ie. The dumbest person in the room. I think of Chips as pretty damn small. To begin with, you're even damn smaller. So much.

No.

Makes a difference that I should switch my chip from them to you.

If you, if you, if you look at chips, they are well, they are small, but if you look at them at a device level. They are more or less all the same size, right? It doesn't really matter if they're a centimeter by centimeter or half a centimeter doesn't make, doesn't doesn't make a difference. The thing is that if you want to measure with with sufficient accuracy, it's usually just. If you cause you more power, you can do it more accurately, but we developed it in a way that we can. We use very little power. but also achieve a very high signal quality. So, and and power consumption translates to battery size. If you we're talking to one medical device manufacturer. And he told us that his device, which is a brain monitoring device is 90%. So 9 9 0% battery.

all the other stuff is electronics. And with our solution, we we consume like 20 times less power than the main competitor in the in the market. They can reduce the battery with more than 60%.

Who is the main competitor in the market, a brand that we might know.

Yeah. Texas. Instruments.

We've heard of them.

Yeah. So it's it's not a small player.

Analog devices.

Analog devices is the other one, of course. Yeah.

Your value proposition is, our product consumes a 20th the power of a Texas instrument chip.

Yeah. Exciting.

No one else doing anything like that.

Not that we are aware of. There are a few others who make their own products, let's say, with probably looking at the specs with a proprietary chip. but they don't sell it to the to to others.

Can you give me any sense again, as a very lay man who has no understanding of engineering, and can't even screw in a light bulb properly. What is the concept that makes you 20 times more efficient than the biggest player? What's the just? Broadly? What is your insight?

Yeah, it. It's really in in the design of the chip to do smart things there. There's also a part that that comes from more. Well, if you look at the Ti, for example, they they are not a medical. They don't have a medical expertise or viewpoint, and we come from a I come from a medical device background and and all my colleague or Mo. Many of my colleagues as well. So we know what to do to comply to all the the medical device regulations. So patient safety stuff, IC norms, etc. And what we did is that we we integrated some stuff in the chip that makes it easier to comply to those regulations, but we also make sure, have a patent

patented circuits around our chip that allows to apply to regulations without adding a lot of stuff that will interfere with your signals. Let's say so. It doesn't make your signals worse, whereas Texas instruments well, doesn't do that. So you need to. So we can make more noise in the chip and noise and power. That's that's a hand in hand relation. So we make a little bit more noise in the chip than the I part. But in the total system architecture, we consume 20 times less.

Oh, there's small.

And all the real details. Why, it's so power efficient part of it is also that the Ti part is like 15 years old, or something.

If if I if.

It's.

By may, yeah.

I was gonna call on you, George, but also this is the part where I like. I can see where this is going, and I encourage folks who understand what the fuck he's talking about to ask him questions. George, we'll start with you.

Yes, if I may, you can call me the Duval Advocate. The in in regards to the major chip players not having the their footprint in healthcare. I beg to differ. I know Ti and analog devices have their own initiatives internally to create it. So I don't see where the differentiation you're talking about making your chip a little more regulatory, compliant than than theirs. The The concern I have is you're talking about noise, signal to noise, ratio, and all that stuff for especially small signal interpretation of Eeg or ecg. Or bio bioelectronics coming off of the body. This is something that I know that Ti and analog devices have been priding themselves on differentiating themselves on from other other vendors, and it's always a race. So you know I don't know your your chip. I don't know the specs but you know it'd be interesting to see that, you know. Yeah, you're you're a lower

power power footprint. That's that's definitely a plus. But the rubber hits the road when it's the signal to noise ratio the the ability to interpret the the signals to meaningful quantifiable actions, for you know the the medical community.

Yeah. I? Well. the 1st part about the the Ti not being well, they they, of course, have their application teams, I think, even devices they they recently released something like their own product even in the medical field. So

I. I worked for devices previously and and have worked alongside as a medical device developer with Ti analog devices. They're both like in a a definitely a head to head race on you know, who can? Who can supply the the better. biometric signals coming off of the body.

Yeah, maybe maybe it's good to if- if we're talking signal to noise ratio with our our chip compared to the Ti part, we are similar in many, many aspects, and there's 1 that we are beyond them, and that's the when it comes to compatibility with well dry electrodes. So not gel based electrodes, gel based electrodes. I think we perform more or less the same for dry electrodes. We are way better. In terms of well, artifacts and stuff like that.

George, knowing what you know when he you hear something like this is 20 times better. Is your reaction like what? Now? I don't get it.

The the hair on the back of my neck goes, yeah, show me.

Yeah.

I can imagine that you're a little bit skeptic about it, but it's true. The the people at analog devices and Texas instruments they don't really know the the physiological measurements. They see a human body as a kind of generating electrical signal thing. But it's more than that.

I worked with team digital healthcare systems directly that was looking at the biomedical something. We were the we had a lot of biomedical people that were actually looking at the physiological aspect of it, developing the algorithms, understanding the the physical, physiological nature of that. And so I I you know there are teams inside these companies that are looking at that and don't get me wrong. I mean, kudos. Great! You guys are developing this, but don't underestimate those giants. They have poured a lot into into doing this as well. Good luck.

The dumb thing is that at my company we're redeveloping an Ecg system, and he's on the other side of the road, and I just regularly grab a cup of coffee with him, but we now choose for a Ti chip, and that the only reason for that is that we now develop it, and we have to know that it's still there in 10 years. Yep, so so Benjamin still has to prove that he's he can conquer the market and not he's not away in a few years. On the other hand, we are part of Demcom, and I know that is doing a few. How do you call it? They do new projects with his chip. So I'm also on the sideline, a little bit involved.

But that's it. They have to really show themselves that they are better than the rest.

Yep.

Andre.

Yeah. And, Joe, you know, you mentioned that we're manufacturer. But we also design some products from the ground up. And I appreciate what what George and Luke said. But candidly, Benjamin, I'm very interested in what you're talking about, because we have requests sometimes from people for a fundamental design of our product, and the power requirements sometimes limit the amount of functionality that we can design into a unit because it has to meet certain physical parameters, or or you know, ergonomic parameters. Let's say so. I was very interested to learn about what you're doing, and I understand skepticism, but I'm very open to seeing what it be, because we're always interested in differentiating our designs.

Yeah, that's, of course, very good to hear. But it's also the yeah. it's very hard to to go into the details of why? Why, why, I think what we did is is is special, but it's also I think that Luke also has more, has has quite a point. With that we built this chip from the ground up, coming from. Well. let's say things need to be well. Wearable devices need to be smaller but they also need to have a certain signal to noise ratio. I mean, there, I think there are a million chips around there that can measure heart rate. Right? I mean, that's that's probably every Adc. On on board of a microcontroller can do that. But really measure a high quality. Ecg, but eg. Is even more challenging. And that's also my background. By the way, that from I come from

there's also my specialization, that biomedical engineer to process, eg. Data, and having to deal with all the artifacts and stuff that you encounter during those measurements. So that's also the the my let's say, contribution to the to to the chip. I'm not a chip designer. So I'm I didn't design the chip. But I could tell the guys, okay, this is how people use it. And this is how what they would like to achieve. And that's also what we see now. Last week I was at Ces. and you see all the all the headphone manufacturers now. including eg. In their headphones. Sometimes I'm even surprised by how they look at it? Because then you, you ask them, okay, but what do you want to do with it? Or what? What are you going to do with the data? And say, Yeah, well, we will figure something out. It's really strange. They don't even have a use case in many cases. I think some of them have. But

all the rest is just following. Yeah, you cannot have a a device or a chip inside that that consumes the amount that the.

Have you done? Have you done anything in the applications of contactless? Ecg, where you you see this in some automobiles where? You know, it actually picks up the Ecg signal capacitively coupled through the clothing into the into the seating, or something along those lines.

No, no, not yet or not yet. There are no immediate plans for that. But no, we haven't looked.

Jonathan, why do you write what you do?

Oh, I was just thinking, if you're if you're focused on low power applications. And hmm! I would. I would imagine that since the eyewear is going to be, you know, or vision, technology is going to be the next phase. We see how Meta is doing a great job in that It just seems logical that you would go in that direction. Headphone application. I would say no. But eyewear application definitely, because that's going to be the new interface. and that we're gonna need low power.

Yeah, I've seen I've seen a few or even we had a had a meeting at Cs that that was a demonstrated device that had all kinds of electrodes incorporated in in smart glasses. and they were still using something that that connected externally to the, to the shoulder or or to the neck, completely sure, there was quite, quite bulky, bulky thing. They recently were able to reduce the power consumption of the of the signal processor that they use. So so the the AI processor, or whatever it it did. but they're still struggling, basically with the with the acquisition part which was based on a on a Ti chip.

So we are now well looking to. Well, for for us it's difficult because it we are startup. So we have to pick our customers very carefully. We cannot do any. Every nice looking scientific project, right? But you also need compelling demonstrators to really showcase what what the technology can do.

Well, and I would also argue that you should maybe not be so focused on medical but look at consumer applications like anxiety, or some other type of a way to to hit higher volume a more specific application that your chip can produce under the power constraints that you have a specific advantage for. And then, with the profit of that, you get your way back into the medical world, or you, because the medical world I mean how many companies fail, because they just can't get off the ground because it goes so slow, whereas consumer products can go much, much faster. So I'm always a big fan of pushing, for, you know, let's say, anxiety is something that you can actually capture. You know, or or tension or stress and you can integrate it into the mouse of a computer or into the eyewear of the latest, you know, glass eyewear. And it's picking up.

you know some particular signal that you can capture and deliver back as feedback mechanism. I I think you have a better chance of making revenue getting some some licensing fees or some other types of costs have it having support for the production capacity, so that you have the things that you need to produce paid for by large corporations that have money to go explore versus like waiting 2, 3 years for medical device companies to like. Get on board.

Benjamin, how many employees do you have? How much funding do you have? Is it seed ground? Where are you.

We're now with 25 people.

25, you say.

Yeah, 25. 8 of them are chip designers. I think depends on how you count exactly. The 8 of them are application application people and then you have 8 or 9 people around that. We are. We just closed. How do we? How did we call it this a 2 route on the Internet. We also find a be round. But that's all more. Well, it's detail stuff that that's I won't go into that. That's more.

Much have you raised so far?

See? Well, we'll go almost 1010,000,000.

Okay? And early prospecting. You've identified some collaborators, strategic partners, potential customers.

Yeah, we have so we have. Well, we collaborate. During the 1st version of the chip, we collaborated a lot with the mother company item. So they did a lot of the design back then. We are now going to do it completely by by ourselves, because we have a full up and running chip team. Now. and we have a a joint development agreement or joint development partnership with Nxp so we also run in their quality system, and we run in their fabs with our chip.

I'm gonna call on some suspected question askers, your Rick and Eddie. Do you have something you'd like to contribute or ask.

Yeah, my key question is, so you mentioned something about patches? And then you said headphones. So are all of your applications that you're looking at right now. external to the body? Or are you looking at anything that's implantable?

No, that's not not part of the the. We sometimes have some wild ideas. But no, we-, we need to be really focused. And we really stay on the the outside of the body, for now.

Okay, yeah, so and and are you, are you communicating your signals via Bluetooth, or.

No, we-, we just do the amplification. And we- we are completely independent of- of a processor that- that the customer wants to use it. The the experience is that they all want something different. They all have thorough.

Okay.

Platform.

Yeah, I've you know, I've I've developed wearables for Philips and analog, and and also Boston Scientific, although those were more or less called insertables as opposed to that, because we was an endo group. But yeah, interesting I'd like to learn more about your your product line, and and how that might differentiate with what's what's out there I've done. I've done a lot in the wearable space and you know, new applications part of the problem is, is everybody, and their brother is doing a watch or a patch. And and you know, how do you differentiate that between you know the consumer grade, and especially the consumer rush and the worried worried. Well, that's going after you know that market and the push that I was doing and have been involved in is

clinically viable study grade wearables that are used more for the biomedical community and the and the research in that in that department. So be interested to learn more. I didn't.

Yeah, sure, I can.

I didn't mean to come on so hard.

No, no, no problem. There's I have a deck that's free to share with anyone. So I can. I can. Just I can put it in.

Like I connected with you on Linkedin.

I'll send it to you.

Yeah, thank, you.

You have something.

In most of the time. I just keep in touch with my electrical engineering friends in device development because they develop something truly amazing and very often just say, Well, we just want to make sure nothing happens to this. And so that that's when I get involved. But I love stuff like this, because it's it's it's just creating. It's creating a brand new environment chips that use less power that have more sensitivity, that have better that have better signal to noise ratio, and therefore a wider range of things. They can communicate and process simultaneously. I don't even know how they work.

but I'm amazed at the things they do, and they keep. They keep producing brand new devices I wear. I wear glasses, and these are kind of tiny glasses. They're not very. They're not very large. but I can imagine the time when we could have a chip that could process efficiently enough, so that audio and visual feedback would all be located in here, and and I already use. I already use audio to create a lot of things with my clients, and I'm just looking forward to this. This is really fantastic, I think, within about, I think if you can get these things to where they they devour less electricity. We're going to have an entirely new range of applications, both personal industrial defense, everything. So

so those are a lot of words for not being able to communicate anything technical to this discussion at all, because I really don't know how they work.

The most exciting eyewear thing I've seen recently is an application for closed captioning for deaf people.

Oh, boy!

Wow!

Oh, boy. so we won't have when someone's speaking. We won't have half the screen taken up by somebody doing sign language that would be kind of cool just to be able to have it scroll across.

Benjaminence aspects of your your deck that you think would be illustrative for our group here today.

Maybe.

Because he now searches for the deck for dumb people.

But it's it's really difficult to to.

That's fine. How about of timetables recognized, and they all slip. Say, we're the most bullish group you meet. We can't wait until this is available. When can we place our 1st order.

Yeah, that that's that actually good question. It was also mentioned before about the timelines of medical stuff, etcetera. This is when we started this this adventure. Let's say, 4 years ago, we really thought, Okay, we're going to do the medical space and forget the consumer space. They are not ready. It's not going to work. They will never include this in a smartwatch or whatever. So we're going to do medical. But if you then really dive into that. What will happen? You have a chip, and they need to integrate it in device that takes them. Well, if it's a simple one, maybe 3 months, 6 months. If it's a complicated one, takes them a year or so. And then they need to do the whole approval stuff. If you're in the EU with Mdr. You're amazing.

maybe 2, 3 years. So if you all add that together, you're on the market in 4 years or something, you don't have any volume until that point as a chip manufacturer, and they're not going to pay you a lot of money, and they don't have the volume yet, so they will buy a thousand chips or 10,000, if if it's a very, very big customer. You will not make any money out of that. So that's also why we diverted a little bit and and look more into the consumer space because they they can go a lot faster if you look at our timetable right now. we have the 1st 1st version of the chip. It works, but it has some quirks, and there are some some issues with the how many of them work before they can be shipped out? So we need to do a redesign on that. That's that's ongoing at the moment, and we expect to have that finalized by the end of the year. And have it mass production ready. Yeah, let's say, early next year.

In the meantime we are. We are collaborating with. It's now 8 partners that already started the design of of medical devices and a few of them are not medical and they they do it at their own risk. So we are all always very honest about that about the status of the chip, and also the concern that Luke already mentioned, that yeah, I was certain. Argue that that we still exist in in 10 years. That that's a risk they are willing to take and and we sometimes even say, Don't do it just by the Ti part, for now it's it's not ready for your application yet, but they still want to do it, so apparently. It sometimes feels I I'm doing sales or or marketing pitches, but it it sometimes feels like I'm I'm convincing the customer not to do it, but they still want to do it. So that's really that's actually kind of crazy, but it also is a is a

let's say, evidence that what we build is kind of what they are looking for. So long story short, about a year from now it should be available.

Patricia.

A quick. If you were, gonna give me like a couple bullet points of the product. What would those be for my short attention spent. Say, say, we're walking like the elevator pitch. Say, we're walking away, and you wanted to give me a couple of bullets. What would those be.

Yeah. So what we've built is an amplifier chip for electrophysiological measurements. With with very high signal quality. combined with a very low power consumption, enabling a much smaller wearable devices to development of much smaller, wearable divising devices that still provide very high signal quality. I would say. That's that's in 2 sentences. What? What we did.

Okay, thank you. And the application can be in various devices.

Yeah, it's everything that measures a bio electrical signal. So like, ecg, emg, so muscle, activity, or brain, eg.

And are you? Are you currently in collaboration? Okay, now, thank you. Those are the bullet points I was looking for. Are you in collaboration with laboratories, too, that are looking at these types of research.

Sorry. Can you repeat that?

There's there's labs that there's a lot of labs that I know in university settings, too, that are looking at different voltage, gated channels. And things like that. Are you in collaboration with any of those top research organization.

We collaborate a lot with the University of Tenta, which is really close to our office, and also has a very strong chip design. Faculty. yeah. And and and there are a few test labs. But I wouldn't call them they are not really university related. Let's say with, with obviously all the testing and stuff, some some of the things you cannot do by yourself. So we we outsource that, and we work together with. you know, partners

Thank you.

Terribly close by, but some some of them are a little bit far away.

Thank you.

Have have you worked with? Imac, or Lou University of Leuven?

No, no. We we talked to the I'm a guys quite, quite often, actually. But we didn't collaborate with them.

The output? Is it analog only, or is it digitized?

It's it's digitized. It's 24 bit data stream.

So last week's speaker, Mark Omo, from Marcus engineering, was talking to us about post quantum cryptography. in medical devices, and the NIST standards that are going into effect. And the security cyber security of that and I also know that you know they call themselves as as an engineering company, the breaker of chips and that they're able to reverse engineer and or reuse devices that are not supposed to be reusable by breaking the chips. I'm interested. If this has any bearing whatsoever on this conversation, number one and number 2. If so, how.

So they they trick a chip. Let's say that that should be a single use thing to do multiple users, or or how do I? Is that.

Right single use to to reuse this device, to to a reusable.

Yeah, I I'm not sure at what what point you would normally implement such a thing in a device. If if that's more on processor level, or already on our because, yeah, my colleagues will kill me if I say this. But it's it's more or less a dumb Adc, just digitizes data. That it picks up. So I'm not sure if we don't do a lot of smart stuff, let's say on the processing part in our chip, but we give it to a processor. So I I can imagine that on that part you need to do a lot of security stuff as well, but I'm not sure if if that should be on our side as well.

haven't haven't got a lot of questions in that direction yet, so.

Just curious. Thank you.

Yeah, thank, you.

I don't know if you saw in the comments that I had written, honey, I shrunk the devices. I think that would be a a nice, nice tagline.

Yeah.

Luke did the did Benjamin hit all the points you anticipated.

No, not really, because one of the strong points is the that. It's it's much easier to comply to all the medical standards with their chip than with others, because like. For our Ecg system. Now, we have already have 5 meetings with 3 people or 5 people just to to take off all the the things that are that need to be investigated, or that are not easy to implement. And that is, it's a breeze with their chip. At least, what I know about what one of their customers is is saying, and the other one is that it's not only very useful for for variables, for up to 8 channel signal, but you can, Daisy, chain them easily to how many.

Of officially 32. But there's no reason why it couldn't be more.

Okay, 32 times 8. So if you have like, if you want to measure on grids on our complete head caps. then, not only for a stationary device. All the power adds up really quickly, because if you have. say 30 times 32 times, 2 or 3 Watts, or you have 32 times a very small amount. You don't have to feed that from the device as well, and in electrical physical measurements the leakage current towards the mains is is one of the main sources of that you get 50 or 60 hertz in your signal, and with their device with some less power. You also need less isolated power, which means less.

Leakage currents means means a better signal as well. So it's not only for wearables, it's only very great, for if you have a lot of channels together. and also there's 1 thing that's called reference amplifying, it's did did. If if all your your electrodes are well placed on your body, and there's no one hanging loose or whatever. Then the best way to measure your devices is to compare it to your average of all your signals. and that is implemented in the chip directly, and it's not implemented in all other chips. It is a niche. It's a niche for head caps or for for grid measurements, but it's still there, for for if you have a lot of channels and a lot of signals.

but I guess the the main point is that it's a breeze to work with it. They have a nice I say, nice document how to implement it for medical reasons.

No, I think that was that was also a little bit the the aim

I. I still hope that analog devices walks by these days and say, Oh, that's a nice one. Let's buy the company. Then point one will be very rich, I guess. and point 2. The 1st thing I do is walk to him and say, let's start a company with your chip. Let's make some devices.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that could happen.

Like Phillips Phillips might be more interested to be honest with you. cause they they they do a lot in the wearable and patient monitoring space and the and getting the that particular level of bio signals off. But yeah. that's why nxp, which is a spin off. you know, of of Phillips, I think, is is a is a good path forward. So yeah.

Benjamin, if you're available next week, we're talking about bridging the gap between design and regulatory. That may be interesting for you. Do you have any closing comments for us today.

no. I really enjoyed the discussion, and also the well, the the critical points, which are always well. we can only learn from that, and also see.

You guys thought, you know.

Some comments in the in the chat that are also helpful. I'll definitely reach out to to many of you.

Like you have a few invitations already floating into your Linkedin. I'd like to ask Nikhil to say, Hi! I think you've not introduced yourself to the group yet.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, I'm inviting our new friend to say, Hello. We just Hello.

Thank thank you for the invite great to be part of this group. I'll just give a brief background. Not very long. So I'm an orthopedic surgeon by background and based out of Birmingham in the Uk. I previously worked with 2 notified bodies, so I'm quite well versed with the regulations around medical devices, and I agree with Jonathan's point of view. The time to introduce any new technology into this space is, I think, one of the issues is with the notified bodies. But I'm hoping to lend my expertise now to bridge that gap or shorten that gap to sort of bring the knowledge out to the wider public from the notified body perspective.

so I currently work for a Cro, which is a Med. Tech company. We run clinical trials largely in France, but in Spain and Germany, and now in in the Uk as well, we have a AI arm, which is Milo, which provides a bespoke sort of solution for clinical trials which doesn't require integration into the Ehr. And we're trying to improve that. And hopefully it should hit the markets very soon. Yeah, that's sort of a brief outline.

Thank you. And while you were talking you mentioned orthopedic surgeon. So I actually gave you the email address of our friend Alyssa Huffman. She's the CEO of illuminate, and she's winning all sorts of grants and awards and recognition for a spinal screw she's working to bring to market, so that may be a particular interest to you.

Yeah, thank you. That's great.

It's also noteworthy that he's going to be a workshop leader and speaker at 10 x which I hadn't any anybody yet. So

I'm making the connection now. Good. I'm glad you guys connected and made that happen.

Thank you.

Actually. So that reminds me, I'll put this for everybody, for those of you who are coming. This is the link for the group rate for the Hyatt. If you've not taken advantage of that yet, and it'll be here sooner than you think so. Benjamin. Of course, if you wanna, you know, I don't know if Luke has any freaking flyer miles or something where you know the passenger comes for just 99 quid or euro, or whatever the hell you guys use over there. But I know he's on his way out to see us, and oh, you know he can come all the way from the Netherlands. But apparently the trip from New Jersey is just too arduous

for some of the group members.

The fact that you keep pushing this guy to come makes me want him to come because I have to meet him in person, because you really really want him to come.

I really do right, he tells me, to screw myself. It really it's it's.

A nice.

Is anyone planning to be at Md. And M. And 1st week of February.

I have.

Device and manufacturing show in Anaheim.

One of my clients is going.

Okay, well, I'll be there. And So I was hoping Andre and Andre might, you know, show up for that.

Not going anywhere.

It's not.

I'll go to Mdnm. East at Javitz Center.

Oh, yeah, it's not. It's not the same. It's not as good.

I know.

He needs an invitation to go to the next room. He's willing to fucking desk, and that's it. It's disgusting.

We'll we'll just pick them up.

I'm glad I'm giving everybody something to talk about.

Browse about put Mrs. Domino on. She's more reasonable.

She's not here. Sorry.

And she never is.

I'm I'm missing your tie.

Cheers.

Owes sorry, but it's you have.

Oh, wow! An incognito! Tie!

It's tone on tone.

Wow!

Camouflage very current. He's very current in the style.

I'm even more impressed because, you know, I have an eye for these things. It's the 1st time that, like there was a question.

But.

Whether or not he was wearing a tie. He's always got some degree of contrast. Maybe there's something going on in New Jersey about which we are fully unaware.

You're amazing. Joe.

And Benjamin, we're grateful for your time today. Of course the invitation is extended to you. If you wanna come out to see us in in May. We'd love to have you and Luke thank you for bringing your friend to introduce to our little community here.

Okay.

Joe H. And Joe H. Enterprises and Shawn Smith and Shawn Smith Enterprises. This has been this week's Mdg. Premium, and we'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Excellent.

Thanks, bye.

All right.

If you need.