Welcome to The Bright Eyes Podcast: Advice for Healthy Vision for All Ages. Your hosts are Dr. Nate Bonilla-Warford & Dr. Beth Knighton, residency-trained optometrist that provide eye exams for glasses and contacts, and specialty services including vision therapy, myopia control, orthokeratology, and sports vision training. Their mission to empower patients by providing the best in friendly, professional, and individualized eye care.
In this episode, Dr. Nate talks with Adam Cegielski From Eyecarrot about Binovi and Binovi Touch.
You can listen in the player below or read the transcript. The show is available via Stitcher, Google Play, iTunes, and the webplayer below. You can find all previous episodes here. If you have any questions or suggestions for future episodes, please email office@BrightEyesTampa.com.
Full Transcript:
Intro: 00:10 Welcome to the Bright Eyes Podcast, advice for healthy vision for all ages. Your hosts are Dr. Nathan Bonilla-Warford and Dr Beth Knighton, residency trained optometrist providing eye care to all ages with exams or glasses and contacts and specialty services including vision therapy, Myopia control, orthokeratology and sports vision training. Their mission is to empower patients by providing the best in friendly, professional and individualized eye care
Dr. Nate: 00:39 From St. Petersburg beach in Florida. This is the bright eyes podcast. My name is Dr. Nate Bonilla-Warford and I am here with Adam Cegielski. Adam is the CEO of a company called Eye Carrot and I'm so excited about this because I've wanted to do this for almost a year. I've been talking and emailing with Adam for a very long time. I'm a big believer in what he does and what his company does and I've wanted to get him on this podcast for a long time and it just finally happened that we are in the same room and we can, we can get it done. So how are you doing today, Adam?
Adam: 01:13 Oh, I'm doing great. Dr Nate. Thanks for having me.
Dr.nate: 01:16 Yeah, so this is, so this is really good. So we are here at the college of optometrists and Vision Development, Florida study group. This is an annual meeting that, happens in the summer and the doctors that provide vision therapy and are specialized in children's vision a get together and we all take turns lecturing and sharing thoughts and cases and , you know, it, it's, it's a great meeting. Now you were able to come last year or when the meeting was in Miami you, had an opportunity to interact with some of the doctors and so it's nice that you're here and I think that you're enjoying it because you are from Canada. Yeah. You know, coming down to Florida is not all bad.
Adam: 02:01 No, it's absolutely great. It's my second time here. I've actually been to Florida three times now because of the COVD annual meeting we had in Jacksonville and it's not exactly cold right now in Toronto. We are escaping a bit of a heatwave.
Dr. Nate: 02:15 So our office, bright eyes kids was one of the first offices in the United States to have Binovi, which is the product that you guys make and I found out about it before you even really launched and I was very interested in the benefits that this could have for our patients, who do vision therapy. So why don't you just very briefly introduce our listeners to what the Binovi system is and the different parts of it. And then we'll go on from there.
Adam: 02:43 Oh, okay. Thanks. Dr. Nate. so really this whole started with my personal experience with vision therapy and my son's rehabilitation back in Toronto and we had a great doctor help us achieve the goals of vision therapy and got through 40 weeks of therapy. But we had that experience of binders and papers and notes and as a, as a technology futurist or whatever we call ourselves. I and my partner Sam said, listen there's, a better way to deliver therapy. We think and doing that, we, we sort of unveiled the idea that this should be delivered smoothly through a mobile app with videos with content and we built the Binovi platform, not really a product we built software and hardware that delivers a modern comprehensive experience that, that really maximizes what you get out of in-office therapy and gives you the tools you need at home to be able to do really good homebased therapy.
Adam: 03:42 So, so the Binovi platform is really a mobile platform that allows the doctor and the therapy teams to deliver home based activities through one to two minute videos that really explain, you know, the way to do these activities which are complex, which are difficult. And that platform was launched and you were one of the first people to even talk to us before we even went live, and so we've now launched that software. We've launched some hardware and we're at a spot where I can come back to this meeting and have the confidence of, of, you know, customers that are actually enjoying the product and using it.
Dr. Nate: 04:20 So, you know, I was very interested in what you guys are doing because like you said, vision therapy is very, very powerful, but it's difficult if you've got these binders, these sheets of paper with instructions and you know, in, in our experience. And I think that this is pretty true for, for a lot of offices. The person who's providing the home therapy is not always the person who brings the patient. There might be a grandma who's bringing them because mom and dad are work
Dr. Nate: 04:51 Or we'll live in split households. There's different things going on. And so communication with the people who are assisting the patient at home, has always been been a challenge and it's something that we've always tried to improve upon by, giving them a manual at home with instructions and those have links to YouTube videos and we've tried to make sure that everybody understands the process. But when I saw what you guys were doing, I said, Aha, this is this is a modern way to do this. And that's why I was, I was on board,
Dr. Nate: 05:28 So what have other doctors told you about their experience with taking it live.
Adam: 05:36 Well, you made a really good point about sending materials home youtube links and you're not the first person to have this idea. You know, we've had many, many doctors across the United States say they had the exact same idea, but obviously the development work to put this all together is, is extensive and took a lot of time and effort and money. Um, but doctors have, you know, have been waiting for some sort of a platform like this to come live. Obviously there's a lot of different doctors in the United States, a lot of different ways to do therapy. and we've, we've obviously embraced as much and as many of the ideas as we can from, from all the different people using our software. But for the most part we've had really good experiences.
Binovi Touch in action.
Adam: 06:15 You've had some doctors that have said, listen, I haven't done home therapy and years just because of the difficulties you're explaining right now. And, uh, we live in a different world than we did five, 10 years ago. We have Netflix, we have these video delivery platforms, um, that are such a big part of our lives. And, uh, and really we're, we're now at a spot where, the cost of hosting video and the cost of doing these things is at a spot where it is suddenly scaleable. It is realistic. And you know, there are 2.7 billion people with smartphones, I think in the world at this point, maybe closer to 3 billion people. So naturally, video and compression of, of content and compression of data put us into a spot where we can do this. And doctors are absolutely loving the platform. Therapists are loving the platform. And most importantly, when we have a short term window where the, where the APP is not functioning, we realized its value when we have all these patients contacting us saying, I can't live without this. I need this. Where is the APP? So we've had all sorts of really good feedback. And, you know, we're, we're in a really good spot right now
Dr. Nate: 07:24 So at our office we see vision therapy, you know, essentially as, as teaching learning and just like my son takes a cello lessons, he has to have both the instruction from an expert, but he also just needs time to practice. That's that skill and he needs to know what to practice and, and so Binovi does a fantastic job of keeping the patients and the parents up to date on what they're supposed to be doing. And there's a checklist that patients and parents know what, what to do. There is a chat feature. So if parents or providers at home, there's a chat feature, so whoever's helping the patient at home can interact with the therapist right away and give them some information, that is really helpful. And um, what we like is we can actually see when patients are doing the therapy because patients who practice things get better at them in, you know, in my experience. And so that's been really helpful.
Adam: 08:29 Yeah. And I'll give you an example in Canada and a cold winter, we're doing therapy. Uh, my wife goes to therapy with the doctor and, and my son, they come home, we eat dinner. Therapy's, usually the last thing on our list to do and of course the binders in the car and it's snowing outside and you get the binder, no I'll get the binder and it becomes a a bit of a chore. And ultimately, you know, compliance is a big factor in how healthcare technology is really changing our, our medical landscape and knowing that we're actually doing this homework, knowing that we're actually logging into the APP as a clinician. I think it's very powerful.
Dr. Nate: 09:07 So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now and where, Eye Care and Binovi are headed in the future.
Adam: 09:14 Okay. So as of right now, the binovi platform has been out for about a year. We have doctors in basically four continents around the world that are using the software. And we've completed our first video library. We're extending the content now to add more educational content through some of our doctors. We have developed a tool that's been around since I think 1974 called the Wayne Saccadic fixator and we've released, I think the seventh version of that now as the Binovi touch. So that is a device that is used in the vision therapy clinics with doctors that actually gives you that, uh, in office Rehab, in that office training. That device is now launched to about 100 clinics across the United States, Canada. And, um, and, and we've, really we spent two years working in developing this tool. We've probably done about 25 different prototypes. We've got an early feedback.
Adam: 10:11 We've tried to keep it as true to its original version that was loved and used across thousands of locations around the world. Most importantly now it gives the doctors in the therapy teams simplicity of using the IPAD. It gives the children and the patients using this fantastic experience where they can actually engage with modern tools, too complete therapy and obviously most importantly capture patient data profile data. That ties back to these, to these patients so you can measure progress, not just what you're doing at home, but in the clinic. Now we're starting to capture that in clinic data, tie it to the patient experience and obviously share with the parents. You know, that progress has happened week after week.
Dr. Nate: 10:55 And that data that you're collecting from the Binovi touch, which is modeled after one of the most beloved vision therapy instruments of all time. tell us a little bit about some of the other population, some of the other people you're working with. This is some pretty exciting stuff.
Adam: 11:11 Yeah. You know, this device has been used with professional athletes across the world. Recently we've worked with, an individual named Bryce Salvatore who was captain of the New Jersey Devils. He's using it in, in his New Jersey training facilities with, with kids and trying to promote the importance of what could be done for vision performance. We have championship mma fighters and boxers and soccer players and football players that absolutely love the device and, Rehab hospitals that are using it on stroke patients and a wide range of utilities essentially.
Dr. Nate: 11:49 So, we're gonna wrap up here because our meeting's about to start. But anyhow any last few words you want to mention to our listeners,
Adam: 11:56 Just listen. Just go and do that homework. Log into your APP. Hopefully Binovi is giving you a really good experience that multiplies the benefits of what you're getting from the doctors and therapy teams you're working with.
Dr. Nate: 12:08 All right, well thank you Adam. we've been wanting to do this for for a very long time. We've been together at meetings but just didn't have our schedules line up so I'm thrilled that we were able to do this to everybody who's listening. Thanks so much. If you ever have questions, you can reach us at office at BrightEyesTampa.com. And, I hope you have a good time and stay dry. Avoid the rain!
Outro: 12:32 Brought to you by Bright Eyes Family Vision Care and Bright Eyes Kids. Find previous episodes and more detailed information at BrightEyesTampa.com Creative Commons, copyright attribution, non-commercial use. The only purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a doctor experienced in the area you require. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. Please consult your physician for diagnosis country.
Intro/outro music: Lucas Warford of Three For Silver.
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