Hi, welcome to our second podcast. I'm Tricia Pepper from the Tobii Dynavox marketing team, and we are going to brighten up this cold, dark Friday by getting to know an energizing force of nature, Tara Rudnicki, President of North America. Welcome, Tara. Wow. Thank you. What an intro. Now, I know that you and I have two things in common, aside from working for the same amazing company. We both have curly hair, and we're both slightly fast talkers. Don't worry, I've been warned to slow down for the podcast. Okay, good. We'll keep each other in check. Aside from these two commonalities, there's not much else that I know about you as a person. Before we get down to all things business, I just wanted to try and get to know you a little bit better. Can you tell us a little something about your life outside of work or maybe what a typical weekend might look like for you? Typical weekend for me is trying to catch up on some sleep, but really sounds pretty boring. Spending a lot of time with my friends and family. Very fortunate to have two wonderful children, and I love to get to see them as much as I possibly can. That sounds very nice. Can you tell us what you do at Tobii Dynavox and why you decided to work in this field? I started in 2001 as a second career with two small children and decided if I was going to work, I really wanted to do something that was meaningful for me and that contributed somewhere in society. I was very fortunate to find this nice little company called Assistive Technology, which later became part of Tobii. I really enjoyed from day one feeling part of something very meaningful. Started in the accounting department and now every day get to see the difference that I can make in the people that I work with as well as the people that we work for. That's sounds like something that so many of the people who work for this company can relate to because I know that so many people come here for our mission. They love that they're able to do something meaningful with their work and with their lives. I'm sure that's very inspiring to a lot of the people who work for this company. Absolutely. Can you also tell us a little bit about the trade organization that you work for known as ATIA? What is it, and what do you do there? It's a second hat I wear. I'm president of the board of directors for the Assistive Technology Industry Association, other well known as ATIA, since 2001. Taking our platform, taking Tobii Dynavox, and bringing it to a different level within our industry. Together as ATIA, as industry members, we're able to influence others, including legislation, for compensation of healthcare standards to enable the growth of the industry to help more people understand and appreciate who and what services we support. We also work to ensure that they are, all of us together, maintain a high level and a high standard of products and services. One bad product sitting on a shelf affects the reputation of each one of us within this industry and affects the ability to grow the market. Right. You're coming up on, well, actually, you've now surpassed 20 years in the industry. Given your history, can you tell us about some key developments that have happened over the years? I came in in a very dynamic time. In 2001, Medicare did not cover ALS patients unless they were over the age of 65, which is their standard. The industry lobbied Medicare, the legislation within the United States to get coverage of ALS patients, which did start in 2001. You helped as part of the industry to get this legislation enacted but it wasn't always smooth sailing from what I understand. Never is a lways a challenge. It wasn't. Once it did start, it was a great opportunity again to create that awareness and that industry bonding of the ecosystem growing together. Unfortunately, we got a challenge in 2014 with Medicare. They decided at the time that our patients, they were no longer going to cover our patients' communication aid use while in hospice, hospitalization, rehab. Again, can you imagine at the most vulnerable time of your life being able to not to be able to communicate your needs, your wants, your medical conditions? That was being taken away. As an industry, as a human being, as a company, that was not acceptable to us. What happened? How did that change? We were very fortunate in being trailblazers, working with so many people in this industry to pull together. We had some guidance from Steve Gleason. Steve Gleason was a young athlete who was diagnosed with ALS and took his platform, which was very big, and how could he help motivate and work all of us together, to be able to pass the Steve Gleason Enduring Voices Act, which means that that was not allowed. Medicare was to continue device, coverage while in those three settings that we spoke about. Right. They effectively restored the right to have a communication aid with the Steve Gleason Act? Correct. You know, I think there's also something that happened before the Steve Gleason Act that a lot of people have heard about but maybe don't really understand how these two things are connected. Can you tell us a little bit about the Ice Bucket Challenge? Absolutely. Again, all dynamic time and all together. We are so fortunate with some of our users utilizing their platforms. We had two users, again, two young athletes, Pete Frates and Pat Quinn, who were diagnosed very early with ALS, probably realized very early on that they were never going in their lifetime to see success of whether it be an FDA drug or a cure. What they decided to do is how could they affect and how could they change outcomes for future people, future PALS. They got on their eye-tracking device, happened to be Tobii Dynavox eye tracker, got on and spoke to the entire world to create this Ice Bucket Challenge, got everybody to understand the awareness, brought everybody together for one common goal, to raise funds for research for ALS. It was quite successful, wasn't it? It absolutely was. They raised over $220 million worldwide to provide for research. In addition to key industry developments like the Steve Gleason Act, like the Ice Bucket Challenge? How have attitudes towards assistive technology changed over the years? Oh, dramatically. back, you know, back when I started in the industry, talking about autism, talking about cerebral palsy wasn't always considered something positive, if anything, in some ways tragic. It has changed so much because there's so much we get to see now, and there's so much that these patients, users, families actually contribute. To see a child now and be able to talk to a child and see that they have a sense of humor versus something that was a behind the door, not wanting to talk about. This is so important to so many people to be able to talk about it and how to create different opportunities for success. This all happens through assistive technology. What would you say is the status of assistive tech, this market in the U.S. today, and what are the industry's next goals? Industry's next goals continues to be awareness. It really is. How do we work together? I think the industry's changed. Before, I think it was everybody was kind of everybody like in their little silo and creating things. Now everybody's working together. How do we create? How do we bounce off of each other to make solutions? I mean, complete solutions. How do we support each other? That includes big tech companies. How do we do this? How do we grow this, to make sure that we provide the best support and services for so many diagnoses? That's something that obviously Tobii Dynavox is very committed to, and we have the very good fortune right now of claiming to be the global market leader within assistive communication. With this really strong history and the strong position in the U.S., what do you believe are the company's competitive advantages that will help us maintain and build on this leadership position? I really think a lot of it, as I said, is that we're trailblazers. We really try to make a difference. We try to incorporate so many different aspects of this. Partnerships with big tech as an example. Many of our products are groundbreaking. Partnering with these big giants such as Microsoft, Apple, and Google. Tobii Dynavox Pilot is a great example, most recently providing native eye tracking on an iPadOS device is simply amazing. Quite frankly, we have the best product in iPadOS systems out in the market. Tara, you mentioned that we are trailblazers. What do we do differently? We offer complete product portfolio for many diagnoses, such as some of our most common ones ALS, autism, cerebral palsy, Rett syndrome. That means from hardware with different operating systems to various access methods such as eye tracking, touch, HeadMouse, scanning, to name a few, which then goes into our communication software, which we have, in many, available in many dozens of languages. We go into our full support of services in order to support the evaluators help choose the right device and the right communication software with the right access method. Through the process of having the device funded in a timely manner and in the hands of our customers, to unboxing the device, turning on the device, all the way through to continued efficient and effective successful use and growth of our devices and/or software. What you're saying is that we don't just make devices. We have a comprehensive offering. Can you explain what that looks like? Absolutely. Again, from start to finish, from actually going through the journey of being diagnosed with something, and then working all the way through to complete. It can be something very simple, starting from saying yes, no, to very complex education, continuous education, literacy. For example, part of that process might include in the US the funding, navigating the funding process. Can you tell us a little bit about how the funding process works in the US and what we do to support people through the funding process? As much as it's great to have the funded, in the United States, we also make it very complicated, and that's a great point that you bring up. Funding can be very overwhelming for families. This whole process can, and it's Tobii Dynavox's mission to make this as easy as possible, less complex, less on their families. What we really do is really focus in on our funding team, really have those in-house experts supporting the families, making sure that they get the help to navigate this very complex system we call funding in the United States. Right. Clearly, the goal for that is to get devices into people's hands faster. Is that what the funding process at Tobii Dynavox does? Faster and successful devices, making sure that they, the end user gets what's right for them. You know, there has been quite a lot of growth in the past year in the North American market. Can you explain a little bit about why that's happening? Sure. Really several reasons for that. We had this thing called the pandemic, and we had to be very, very creative. You went from an industry that was so face-to-face oriented because absolutely love meeting our customers, our patients, meeting them where they are. We had to meet them in a different way throughout the pandemic, and we really had to find solutions on how to be able to create that same value to them. One of the big things in the United States, we put together a very strong digital training program, an awareness program from very simplistic to very complex, making sure that we met the customer's needs every part of their journey. This, digital training program, who is it meant for? Who can use it, and who benefits from it? Primarily, it is used for our customers, prescribers, users, and then in our internal teams. On that, we have a lot of things, as I said, I mentioned it's quick tips and tricks from snippets all the way to how do you actually get the most effective use in communication and language supports throughout. Right. It's mostly, learn at your own pace, is that right? Absolutely. When and where you can, which was another challenge, of course, throughout the pandemic, where so many of us had to wear so many different hats, and families as well, caregivers, educators. Creating this environment that meets their needs was really one of the great successes. You mentioned earlier that a part of the people who use this training hub are our internal people, our solutions consultants. Is there anything else that you've done to help bolster their knowledge? We really, as you said, really focused on our solution team, really wanting to make sure that they knew and understand and could really comprehensive of everything that we have to offer. The large investment is truly bearing our fruit right now. Generally, the awareness level about assistive technology is rising amongst speech-language pathologists, however, it still can be a slow process. We also have much pent-up demand from the pandemic, as a result of that this year, we're able to catch up and get our users to actually be able to meet with a medical professionals again. As you mentioned speech-language pathologists, what are some of the challenges that they face in their day-to-day work to get communication aids into their patients' hands? Time, education, supports. They are challenged each and every day. Their lack of education, or requirements of education as the years have passed on. It is our opportunity and our privilege to be able to help them and make it as simple, but make it as comprehensive and complete as possible to support them literally from language to actual a physical device, of a hardware device, to the supports of that, to the actual funding and receiving of the device. Right. How else do we help, for example, prescribers in their job? Helping them all throughout that process, making sure that we deliver the most comprehensive, simple solutions. What I mean by simple is this can be very complex and very overwhelming. We want to make sure that we put it in simplistic terms so that they can follow along at their pace, at their learning opportunity, making sure that we have the availability of bringing them from the beginning to the end. You've mentioned speech-language pathologists, you've mentioned prescribers, educators, families, end users themselves, and our own internal people. These are the constituents where we're trying to raise awareness by, through training. Are there any other groups that you think need to have a similar type of awareness raising? I think the most important people that we need to continue to be in the forefront, and for lack of a better word from an American, in the face of our legislators and our politicians. They are really truly the ones that need to continue to understand and what the benefits and the value of communication devices, support, and services are to facilitate these devices or aids to these patients. It's critical to be consistently pushing that message and that awareness to them. Thank you so much for meeting with us today, Tara. It was lovely to talk to you and get to know more about the North American market. Thank you so much for the opportunity and sharing what's going on. If anyone is interested in learning more about Tobii Dynavox, we encourage you to head over to our website. You can find it at tobiidynavox.com, where you can learn all about our offering and what we do to help people with communication disabilities lead richer lives.