Ladies and Gentlemen, 2014 has been declared the year of the wearables
Every major publication
every electronics manufacturer, over 200 products were launched in January this year
the news is in, mobile is so last year!
wearables are hot right now. Please meet Romero.
adorable right? Romero is sporting the latest
in wearable fashions, the fitbark. The fitbark of course tracks every one of
Romero's movements and frolics in the park
beaming them straight to his parents mobile. What you wanna make sure you do is that
beautiful pooch does not develop an unhealthy paunch.
Of course most people who think of
wearables, think of the human versions, the activity trackers.
Tracking the basic movement,
the quality of your sleep, the quality of the the air, skin temperature, sweat, heart rate
every possible signal you can imagine these are truly the future
in health. In fact one in 10 Americans own an activity tracker
if we we could just work out how to make the activity tracker do the exercise for you we would
be in a much much better place.
When most people think of wearables they think of something like this
They think of Google Glass. Smart glasses, you too could be watching the
latest episode of Desperate Housewives while pretending to watch me, you could
be reading your email as we speak.
The future of wearables is very very exciting.
and of course when most people think of wearables
they think of the real estate race for your wrist.
In 2014 the highly anticipated juggernauts are gonna come into this space
and its indeed very very exciting, I'm personally excited to own one of these.
The only thing is this. When I think of wearables in 2014,
I think it's something that's been happening for quite some time, I think
of something
that's had big big impact already, and I'd like to share that with you.
Let me take you back to 1958
the first implantable pacemaker, this is the granddaddy of wearables,
this an implantable you cant take this off, you don't have a choice.
This doesn't just tell you what your heart rate is, it tells your heart
what it's rate should be. This is the ultimate in wearables.
Let's keep going, what about an assistive heart pump
this now helps your heart to flow, not just
telling you what your heart rate is. Making it flow itself. This is an actual product
in fact
even Dick Cheney had one of these while he was waiting for a new heart.
Or greater still, implanted electrodes into the brain
to assist with the functions of parkinson's, the symptoms of Parkinson's disease
deep into the brain. This is the actual product, over a hundred thousand people are to be
implanted with these
since they were approved. In fact the latest research is talking about changing this
perhaps to clinical depression. Imagine feeling a little blue
turning up the knob and you feeling much much better. Cybernetics, Bionics,
this space has been changing from science fiction to the real world for
quite some time
it's been coming silently has had a tremendous impact
the research continues. In fact one of my heroes and one of the reasons I got into
this space
is Professor Kevin Warwick the professor cybernetics at Reading University.
He was one of the first to implant an RFID,
a Radio Frequency ID into his hand that allowed him to control his house.
Open the doors, change the appliance and what they're doing, play the best music he could.
Then he went one step further and he planted a chip into his wrist.
At that point he was able to control a robotic hand
from across the other side of the Atlantic. Then he decided to go just one
step further
and he had that same chip implanted in his wife's wrist
so whenever she felt pain he could feel it as well. If that's not commitment to the
vows, I'm not sure what is!
But my favorite,
absolute favorite, dearest, most cherished and closest to my heart is
example of an implantable and wearable together, and one that I've had the absolute privilege of
working on for the last six, seven years,
is the cochlear implant. This is the
only commercial available product
that will restore a sense, hearing. And hearing turns out to be a little bit fickle, one in six of
the population will have some form of
hearing loss. Let me make that a little more stark for you in the room, statistically
speaking
over half of you here will have some form of hearing loss
throughout your life. Just pay attention, this may well be the technology
for you! The impact of hearing loss is really well understood but it's not well
communicated
social impact, depression, withdrawal, unemployment,
in fact unemployment alone accounts for over 3 percent of
the GDP in the UK in the US and other developed economies
3 percent, that's a staggering figure! In fact the latest research around the effects
of hearing loss
are related to dementia. The latest research at John Hopkins suggest that severe hearing
loss
increases the likelihood of dementia by five times.
That's a staggering figure, and the cochlear implant
can affect the most severe and profound examples of hearing loss.
Here's how: A regular hearing aid
actually amplifies the sound but a cochlear implant
actually recreates it. It takes a sound from the outside
and transmits it to under the skin. It's a computer under the skin.
That electric signal is actually transmitted
straight down into the tiny electrodes that's implanted in this beautiful little organ
here called the cochlea
and it directly stimulates the nerve. This is not amplifying the sound, this is
absolutely recreating it. The whole system becomes like the most advanced Bluetooth
headset you can imagine
and it's quite remarkable! Now I want you to imagine that
your child is born deaf, there are 4 born every day in the UK,
and you get a cochlear implant. At one point
you get it turned on.
*Cooper reacting to sounds*
No matter how many times I see that video it still has the same effect
I've been from Australia to Mongolia in these sessions and it always has the same effect.
The idea that you've contributed to this is just remarkable. There are over 300,000 people
in the world
who have cochlear implants, if implanted by the age of 12/18 months
by age 5 you are performing the same as your equivalent hearing peers.
It is a spectacular technology but it's just the beginning for Cooper
with a lot of hard work with his parents, with a lot of hard work with clinicians,
audiologists and therapists he can get there.
It is also just the beginning for the technology itself,
every generation of the cochlear implant system has improved on the key challenges that
we try to fix.
It's usability, its discretion
its hearing performance, trying to make it as natural as possible, and access
to the technology to people who
otherwise don't have access to it.
If the latest products had the most advanced technology you could imagine, the
sorts of things we're talking about are
beaming the sound in a particular direction straight to the implant,
think super human, Superman effects of audio!
The sort of technology which actually analyzes the signal, analyzes the
environment
and changes the way the processor is working with that sound.
In fact, now giving control to recipients themselves
with a handheld device they can fully control their own sound.
This is what this technology is doing, in fact the advances in technology
aren't just happening there, they have gotten so so great in recent years that as
recently as last month
the technology has been approved for the first time by the FDA for a new category of
hearing loss adults that is with age-related hearing loss, high-frequency
loss
and this technology is now addressing them. Wider and wider impact,
greater and greater impact. But the only way to really show you what sort of impact the
cochlear implant does have
is with the special guest that we brought along. Can I introduce the star of the show
'Lydia' to the stage.
Hi Lydia, welcome to the stage, so tell us a little about yourself.
Lydia: I'm eight and a half and I have cochlear implants.
I call them my ears, I have two implants because I have two ears.
Rami: Do you know why you have cochlear implants?
Lydia: My parents have dodgy genes and I got both of them.
Rami: What's the hardest thing that you find to hear?
Lydia: When we do Chinese whispers, only my best friend Katie can
whisper in the right place where I can hear.
Rami: What year of school are you in? Lydia: I'm in year 4 and I go to my local school where none of
my friends have implants. My favorite subject is maths and I'm really fast on my timetables.
Rami: Are they hard to take off? Does it hurt? Lydia: No it doesn't hurt, you take it off like this,
and to put it on, you take it over your ear and there is a magnet here that sticks to a magnet in my head.
Rami: Can you hear at all when you don't have them on? Lydia: No I cant hear at all.
Rami: What do you like doing outside of school? Lydia: I like reading, going swimming and playing the flute.
I also go to brownies, last month I spent the night on a boat in London. I take off my implants so I slept really well, while the others were kept awake by the noisy pub next door.
Rami: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Lydia: I want to be a teacher, a main one, not one of the assistants.
Rami: Final question Lydia, do you see yourself as different to your friends?
Lydia: No not really, the only different is that I'm on TEDx.
Ladies and gentlemen when I think of Romero and I think of 2014
I think of Lydia, I think of cochlear implants and all the incredible things that technology can do
Who knows what's going to happen next whether it's bionic eyes
or amazing things to do with implants for memory retention
but I do know this: If we could all put our energies together
with the best intentions and the greatest minds in this room to making
the greatest problems
go away, that's when the real magic happens.
Thank you very much.