Joe Kiani Podcast Transcript
Joe Kiani joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast.
Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Joe Kiani. Joe Kiani is committed to transforming yesterday’s I possibilities into today’s realities. This is precisely what he accomplished at Masimo and continues to achieve. At Willow Laboratories, which was founded in 1998, Joe Kiani founded Masimo in 1989, a global medical technology company renowned for non-invasive patient monitoring technologies.
Under his leadership as chairman and CEO. Masimo transformed from a garage startup into a publicly traded multi-billion dollar enterprise listed on NASDAQ to name just one successful invention. Masimo signal extraction technology, or set is the primary pulse oximetry that can be found at the top 10 hospitals in the United States and throughout the world.
Today he is leading Willow Laboratories as the team prepares for the commercialization of several new groundbreaking technologies.
Well, good afternoon, Joe. Welcome to the show.
Joe Kiani: Thanks for having me.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate that. Hailing out of the great Orange County. I spent some time there myself. I’m so jealous because the weather’s always great today. Yesterday we’ve had like tornado type weather in Kansas City. If you have not been out here, I can tell you it’s, it’s something to experience.
Joe Kiani: I’ve been there. It is beautiful. But yes, you do have your tornadoes.
Brian Thomas: We do. We, we don’t have earthquakes, but we do have tornadoes. So Joe, I’m gonna jump right into your first question here. You’ve spent decades turning yesterday’s impossibilities in today’s realities. First with the pulse oximetry at Masimo, and now with new two at Willow Labs.
What gap in personal health management convinced you the world needed new two? And how did your past experience shape the app’s creation?
Joe Kiani: There are many gaps. I think starting with lack of knowledge about food. Most people don’t know what foods are really bad and what foods are really good. Secondly, there is this unfortunate, reactionary mindset that we have all of us as people, that we want to get something done quick.
But as you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. So the quick fixes. End up not working, they’re not sustainable. And then, you know, to see people try with medication to do what we ought to do with just some knowledge and some discipline, led me to think we needed something different.
So Nutu. Which means nudge in Latin. It is a tool that if you use that score, you can see it. It looks like a plane, not navigation, but knowing where you are height wise, if you don’t go nose down or nose up, you’re at zero. It’s perfect. Why? Because that means you’re eating right and you’re exercising the right amount.
And if you do that, you’ll not only lose the weight you’re trying to lose, hopefully you’ll avoid getting diseases like type two diabetes.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. There’s so much to learn in that space, but I appreciate the story and that’s usually what kicks off a podcast conversation is, you know, Joe, you set out to make the world a better place.
And knowing that the, there’s a lack of knowledge and nutrition in foods, you aim to fill that gap and I appreciate that and I love the play on words there. Uh, Latin, I did a lot of Latin back in school, but uh, yeah, nudge is a great name there. Joe Nutu’s Heart is personalized Nutu score, a single number that blends metabolism, food choices, physical activity, and sleep to nudge daily decisions.
How did you build that metric and what behavioral science or clinical insights guided its design?
Joe Kiani: I. Well, we worked with many experts, food scientists, nutritionists, endocrinologists, clinicians of all types to come up with something that not only was accurate, but was helpful and easy to use. So everything you said from understanding a person’s metabolism to tracking their sleep, ’cause sleep changes your metabolism to not just counting calories.
But looking at the types of food you’re eating, if they’re rich in nutrition, if they’re rich in protein fibers, and also your exercise. You know, some people like exercising for an hour or two hours a day, some people don’t. But finding what they’re used to doing and just nudging ’em to do a little bit more of it.
It’s all of that coming together. That we believe we can help people make small changes that between a little bit of a change with their eating, a little bit of change about their activity, you can have a big change in their trajectory.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And we all know that, you know, you make that little 1% or half a 1% change, as you get further down the plane, you’ll actually see that you’re making a big difference.
And I like, again, playing on the words, nudging people to make small changes. Will improve their lives immensely in the long run. And of course, working with clinicians and, and dieticians and those people that have a lot of science-based information makes a big difference when you’re looking at improving people’s lives across the globe.
So, thank you, Joe. The next question I have for you, the app offers a CDC aligned 12 month diabetes prevention program alongside a healthy living track. What real world outcomes are you seeing for users trying to reverse pre-diabetes? And how do you define success beyond the scale?
Joe Kiani: The proof is in the pudding, as they say.
So the good news is, first of all, we have people that have been using it. They report not only weight loss, but a drop in their hba one C, which is a very important measure to if people are gonna become diabetic or not. And I have to say, the whole idea here is to not just go with something that. Even maybe 15-year-old science has recommended, but going with what the latest data is showing.
So I’ll give you an example. There are these ideas that, hey, you should not eat red meat. Well, there’s one red meat that if you eat, I. It actually is good for you. That’s the opposite. That’s grass fed beef. If you eat grass fed beef grazed and finished on grass, it actually has more Omega-3 than salmon or as much as Omega-3 is wild salmon.
So that is a great thing to help people not have inflammation. But if you actually eat corn fed beef, which I know there’s a lot of, in Kansas City, you actually will have information. So it’s like it’s trying to get the latest data. Not anecdotal, but scientifically backed data to help people make their health better.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. I know you’ve put a lot into this. It’s science backed, data driven, real people success stories. But I like how you just kind of teased apart a little bit. ’cause there’s always these fad diets or these fad health things and people jump all over ’em. But if people follow companies and people like you that are really out for the benefit of humans in the world.
You’re doing this research and finding out what’s really good as far as red beet versus vegetables and these sorts of things. So I appreciate the insights and I know my audience does. Joe, last question of the day. Looking ahead, what new capabilities or partnerships are you most excited to roll out in new two over the next 12 to 18 months?
And how will they further empower users to take charge of their health journey?
Joe Kiani: We wanna hopefully not only attract a lot of companies that make products, wearables, whether it’s CGM or it’s health trackers, step trackers, so that it’s more seamless, the entry of the exercise, but also working on languages.
You know, right now the languages that we support, our English and Spanish. We wanna bring out German, Italian, French, Arabic, ’cause we wanna make this available to everyone in the world. And you said something I love Brian, I appreciate you appreciating the lengths. We’re going to get the right, get it scientifically right, make it easy to use so that people don’t have to recreate the vast amount of knowledge we’ve amassed over the last several years to create new two.
And I like nothing more than. If everyone on the planet used this to hopefully have not only a longer lifespan, but a longer health span.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. I appreciate you doing what you’re doing and I wanna highlight, again, you’re doing such great research to, again, make the world a healthier place. And that’s what we like to highlight on the podcast is how people are making the world a better place.
I think you’re doing the right thing by attracting companies with trackable and wearable devices. Uh, I talk a lot about that on the podcast, and of course in many of my writings across the internet. And then of course, we want to add more and more languages to get this out to the entire world. So. You’re on the right track.
I think you have a great vision, Joe, and I just hope you keep doing that. Joe, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Joe Kiani: Well, Brian, thanks for having this program and encouraging people to make this world a little bit better. Thank you.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Joe Kiani Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
