Dr. Sarah Smith [00:00:04]:
Welcome to the sustainable clinical medicine podcast. I am your host, Sarah Smith. I am a practicing rural family physician and the charting coach. This is the podcast for physicians and advanced practice providers who are ready to step back from the busyness of their clinical day to share ideas, question everything, and redesign their clinical day. We are redesigning clinical medicine to create sustainable clinical days and create time for our lives outside of medicine. Join us for discussions with world experts who are helping design sustainable models of clinical medicine and the physicians or clinicians who have discovered or designed sustainable models of clinical medicine for themselves.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:00:49]:
Well, hello everybody, and welcome back. Today, we have mister Ron Richard with us who is gonna give us a perspective a little different, so I'm excited to hear about this. Welcome. I'll let you introduce yourself.
Ron Richard [00:01:01]:
Yeah. My name's Ron Richard. My background is I was a clinician in a hospital as a respiratory therapist and later went in emergency medicine and became a paramedic. And so my 8 years working in the hospital took care of a lot of different patients that had mostly respiratory complications, COPD, asthma, or on ventilators or just needed breathing treatments and so on and so forth. And, I really enjoyed my time there, but eventually, I met a, a person that worked for a manufacturer of medical devices, and he invited me to become part of a a think tank with their company and, do consulting with with them, which led me to then, develop CPAP machines and masks and different types of ventilators, sleep diagnostic devices. And then most recently in my career, I've been working a lot with, wearables that, patients can wear and get feedback on how, they're doing, like heart rate variability, afib, all all kinds of different things.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:02:09]:
Interesting. Interesting. So tell us about you as a respiratory therapist way back in the day. What was your experience like during clinical, duties, and what what was happening there that created that desire to go and become something different?
Ron Richard [00:02:26]:
Yeah. Well, for anybody that's been a respiratory therapist, it's guts it has its ups downs during the day. You can be just everything's running smooth, and then all of a sudden, you get a code blue and you've gotta run, you know, with a crash cart to a different part of the hospital, and I was part of the resuscitation team. And so, you never had a day the same, one after another, and so that's one thing I I enjoyed about that. I enjoyed engaging with different patients and meeting people, trying to help them figure out, you know, pathway from where they were at and why they got admitted to the hospital. And then, at the end of my career in the hospital, I actually was in charge of discharging patients who were on ventilators and getting them home and getting them, acclimated to be living at home with a caregiver or parents or their wife or whoever, teaching them how to take care of this person now that they're ventilator dependent. A lot of patients that I dealt with were quadriplegics. And so that was rewarding in in and of itself to be able to get people out away from the hospital environment and back more into, you know, a different living kind of a situation.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:03:40]:
Yeah. Yeah. What about your day? Any, thing about the day that was more difficult or challenging for you, that was impacting your life outside of the medical field?
Ron Richard [00:03:54]:
Yeah. You know, I I told you I'd written a book, called Someday is Today. And one of the examples in there when I was working in the hospital with people that were on ventilators, they were oftentimes innovated. We didn't do a lot of mass ventilation back then. They were, typically intubated and then put on a ventilator. And the first thing I noticed was the difficulty they had in communicating with family or with the staff, just asking for simple things. And so in, in my desire to try to help these patients, I developed a a communication board, which is a real simple device that has the most often requested things that patients wanted and put it on a board, and then the nurse or, the, the parents or the caregiver, whoever the family was, would use that to communicate with someone that was on a ventilator and had lost their ability to speak. So the hospital that I worked at was a teaching hospital, and they were gracious and good enough to help support and fund that project.
Ron Richard [00:04:56]:
It took me about 6 months of doing interviews with actual patients, collecting a lot of data and information about what are the most desired or things that you would want to if you could talk, what would you be asking for?
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:05:09]:
Mhmm.
Ron Richard [00:05:09]:
And that's what, spawned that that project. I went on then with the permission of the hospital and commercialized that product, and it went on to sell over a 100000 units over about a 10 year period. So I I did a licensing agreement with a company in Kansas City, and they, took the project on and the product and developed it further. And then basically, we're the the major distributor for it worldwide. But, yeah, it helped a lot of patients. And, again, it was simple, inexpensive way to alleviate some of the frustration and anxiety that patients experience who all of a sudden you're you and I are talking, and if we couldn't speak, it it changes your whole world.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:05:52]:
Yeah. I mean, respiratory therapy, you think about breathing, but communicating is also such an important piece of patient care and advocacy for themselves or that communication piece. Yeah. Mhmm. Yep. So helpful. Now that's
Ron Richard [00:06:08]:
a a
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:06:08]:
whole another job within a job, by the sounds of it, interviewing patients and families and developing and innovating. Where did you find time for that?
Ron Richard [00:06:20]:
Again, it I had a really great supervisor at the hospital, and they knew the work I was doing in this area. They they had a big heart for it, and so they would let me, take time during the day, during my shifts, to, speak with patients either after they've been extubated or taken off the ventilator, and then they could, after, you know, a day or so, get used to speaking again. Because after you've been intubated for a while, you lose some of the strength in your vocal cords. And that was one of the things I I recognized was I didn't interview people unless, they were able to speak again fairly easily without, you know, getting them exhausted. Mhmm. But, yeah. You know? And then the other part of it too was, you know, seeing people, obviously, a lot of people die when they're on ventilators. I mean, that's the sad part about it, and that's the tough part of the job.
Ron Richard [00:07:13]:
And And then trying to work with the family to make it as easy as possible to transition from the the hospital environment, you know, outside. And then the success stories are the ones that, you know, live and survive, and and they sometimes do come back and require some additional treatment and things like that. So you develop I developed, you know, friendships with a lot of my patients, as a lot of doctors do, as you know. Yeah.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:07:43]:
Absolutely. And and it contributes to some of that heartbreak as well that you see in medicine, for sure, those stories that really hit you in the feels. Yeah. Yeah. Did you have much resistance to the ideas you were proposing to, because this is new. You had you said supportive supervisors who were happy. Did it take a lot of, communication and to to express the ideas and advocate for what you were wanting to do?
Ron Richard [00:08:14]:
No. It was actually pretty easy because, there was an apparent need for something like this, you know, communication device or whatever that was not electronic, not expensive, easy to use. And after, the head of nursing saw it and some of the other physicians saw the prototypes that I was making, and they actually saw them being utilized there in the hospital. It was pretty free sailing, and I was, you know, pleased to be able to then go on, like you say, and and commercialize the product.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:08:45]:
Mhmm. Were you able to personally, commercialize the product and market it yourself, or was this had to be under the banner of the hospital? How did that kind of work out from a business point of view?
Ron Richard [00:08:59]:
Yeah. So I have a consulting company, and I deal a lot with, doctors and clinicians who are inventors. And that's one of the first things I ask them is, how did you come up with the idea, and is it something that you've shared with the hospital? And did you develop it on you the time that you're working? And did the hospital contribute any money or, resources to for you to develop this? And if the answer is yes to any of those questions, I caution them to basically go back to the hospital and get, get an agreement in place that's either bilateral or, through nondisclosure in addition to. Some hospitals, are pretty easy to work with, and they ask the the inventor that if you do go on and commercialize this, they require that a percentage of, the sales are given back back to the hospital. And then those funds are utilized in in a lot of different ways, but it clears then the runway for the inventor to, go outside the hospital and then work with either a manufacturer. Or in some cases, I've seen the inventors start their own, companies. You know, they they get a start up eventually, then they leave the hospital, and they're running up, you know, a full time business with multiple employees.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:10:18]:
Interesting. Interesting. And we'll come back to that in a moment because I'm sure others are interested to hear that. Okay. What took you into paramedics and the emergency department? What, made you wanna switch out of what you were doing before we moved to Inventor?
Ron Richard [00:10:33]:
Well, part of it was, I was lucky enough to be become one of the first licensed paramedics probably in Kansas. That's where I I practice was in Wichita. And the college there actually was the 1st school in the Midwest to offer a full blown paramedic, training program, and brought in instructors from, all over the United States that had expertise in teaching and training and had run fire departments or had run ambulance services and things like that. So I got registered through, the college that I was going to, Wichita State. And then, when my supervisors heard about this and and they saw the training I was going through, they actually allowed me or really prompted me to, work in the emergency room at the hospital. So part of my daily routine would be to go down to the ER and spend 2 or 3 hours just working with patients that were admitted with respiratory insufficiency or respiratory failure and, apply both my respiratory therapy background and and the paramedic component to it. So, it it was really interesting to see, you know, both sides of that. And as you said earlier, you know, breathing's a very important part of our our daily living.
Ron Richard [00:11:50]:
So it was easy to merge the 2, you know, the pair the emergency medicine stuff along with respiratory care.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:11:57]:
K. Now I'm gonna say that in emergency departments, there's a number of egos, and I think that where I've worked previously, because I'm more rural, we didn't have an RT as part of we're, respiratory therapist as part of our usual team in regards to a code blue. So that might make it seem odd that I'm asking this question, but you show up in an emergency department with RT background and now paramedic, and there's nurses and there's doctors and everybody's working, and RTS. How did they even respond to that? How did they place you into their flow of, work? Mhmm. What did that look like?
Ron Richard [00:12:39]:
Well, the first thing I I did notice that there are egos, and there's a a a structure and an an ecosystem in the emergency room. And nurses nurses pretty RNs pretty much run run that, and then they report to, obviously, a medical director. And, one of the common things that you often see in in the emergency room is ventilators, and ventilators are not that easy to operate. So when you mention you're in a rural area and, as a doctor or nurse, you have to know a lot of different things. Because if you don't have a specialist like a respiratory therapist there to turn turn the knobs and set the tidal volume and the flow and all these different parameters that are on a ventilator, it gets pretty confusing and, a little overwhelming for a nurse or a doctor to do do those types of things. So after, the ego kinda thing went down, it was like, oh, this is a very useful part of our department. If we could have somebody that's got these types of skills and understands not only emergency medicine, but how to run a ventilator or, you know, different types of breathing machines. And then it eventually became I was training other respiratory therapists to work in the emergency room, and it was a 247, type of thing.
Ron Richard [00:13:52]:
So they always wanted a therapist down there.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:13:55]:
Right. Okay. So for them, it was part of the culture that we have a respiratory therapist, and they're very useful to you because that means you can drop the mental load of the ventilator, and we'll take over that part for you so you can get on with the other parts of what you have to do. I see how that would slot in once we understand what you do.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:14:12]:
Yeah. Okay.
Ron Richard [00:14:13]:
Yeah.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:14:14]:
Right. So that makes sense about the the culture and how you kinda moved into that area. Alright. So it was more you had the experience. You had this new training come about. It seemed to fit well with what you liked doing and away you went. Mhmm. Fantastic.
Ron Richard [00:14:31]:
It it it would you know, and I think for param you know, when I got into the paramedic school, I just saw so many opportunities for respiratory therapists to to do that same pathway and and broaden their experience by getting that education and knowledge. So, you know, and that was kind of a new a new field that was emerging because, you know, back, when I was working in the hospital, and probably you you saw this too, a lot of fire departments and, ambulances were staffed by volunteers or people in the local community that had a, you know, a heart for doing that kind of thing and, had some ability, but really had no professional training or background in that. They could have been a barber. They could have been a farmer or a plumber or whatever. So and then, you know, the training and everything became a lot more formalized. And, you know, now you have paramedics. You have to be a paramedic now to be a fireman. I mean, that in the state of California where I live, you can't be accepted into a fire department unless first you've gone through paramedic training.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:15:44]:
Wow. Yeah. That really changes the skill set of the people responding.
Ron Richard [00:15:49]:
Mhmm. Yeah. And it's good too because they're responding to emergencies, with car accidents and things like that along with, you know, putting out, you know, fires.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:15:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. And so you're getting that prehospital care optimized. Mhmm. And this was on the cutting edge of that, the very beginning of that. Mhmm. So fascinating. Was there much, from the volunteers who were there, from the nonparamedics who were still in the field? Was there any are you were you seeing challenges or resistance with regards to fitting into there? Because they were previously first aid scoop and run, presumably, if they're not doing prehospital care critical care.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:16:34]:
What was that dynamic like?
Ron Richard [00:16:38]:
Again, it was sort of like getting into the emergency room. You know, there are people, and they've got their own little, sandbox that they're gonna play in, and they feel like, hey. I'm already doing a good job at this. Why do I have to get a credential? Or why do I have to go to school? Because I've been doing this for 10 years or whatever, and, now you're telling me that I have to go become a credentialed paramedic, and, I don't wanna go to the trouble of of going to school or doing that. And and, eventually, those people were, replaced by credentialed therapists and and, EMTs.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:17:14]:
Yeah. It sounds like you're not frightened of the beginnings of new things.
Ron Richard [00:17:22]:
No. No. And I, I've owned and operated my own businesses, and, I've had a lot of great successes, but also a lot of failures in doing so, you know, and trying to be, you know, the old saying, pioneers get shot with a lot of arrows. And, I've had my fair fair share of arrows shot into me from, trying things that sometimes did not work out all that well. And, that's that's a big part of the book that I've written is, don't be afraid to try new things, but also do it with some bit of skepticism. And, one of the chapters in the book talks about why does my product or invention have a right to survive in the, the ecosystem or in the market? You know, you may think you have a great idea, but until you prove it over and over and over again and it's sustainable, like you talk about sustainable clinical benefits, one of the things that I learned when I got into sleep back in 1991, I I really didn't know much about sleep apnea. Mhmm. Even as a respiratory therapist or a paramedic, you really didn't under I didn't have a clear understanding of it.
Ron Richard [00:18:26]:
But as I started to get into sleep and develop CPAP machines and different diagnostic things for, discovering whether you had sleep apnea or not, the sustainable clinical component to, treating somebody successfully with CPAP has enormous benefits in terms of the cardiovascular system. Their blood pressure would go down. Their heart rate would go down. They'd lose weight. They would wake up and feel energetic, could go exercise instead of taking, you know, a nap every 2 or 3 hours. So that that's when I really started to see if you create these types of therapies that are proven, they can significantly improve outcomes, and they have a sustainable life over you know, I've seen patients that have been using CPAP for 10 or 15 or 20 years and and with good good results.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:19:20]:
Yeah. Were you in business or doing anything in that field prior to becoming a respiratory therapist?
Ron Richard [00:19:27]:
No. I owned and operated a, a company that, did, we worked primarily with stereo equipment and electronics, and we did installations in airplanes and in, the automobiles and things like that. So we were I had a specialized company that did mobile stereo as well as we would go into homes and build out, like, home theaters back in the day. Yeah. So I've always been interested in music. I'm a musician too, and I toured and traveled all over the place playing shows. But a big part of my early days was my fascination with listening to records and and music.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:20:12]:
K. So this is prior to becoming an RT?
Ron Richard [00:20:15]:
Yeah. Yep.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:20:16]:
Musician, businessman in the technology field, installing speakers, installing sound systems, doing musical musical, performances. That's already, a big preclinical career.
Ron Richard [00:20:33]:
Yeah. It got me ready ready to do something else, you know, something, in a in a hospital. You know? And I I had a friend that worked in the hospital, and that's how I got introduced to, respiratory therapy is he he kept asking me, why don't you come and visit and just kinda see what we do? I think you might like it. Mhmm. And, sure sure enough, I went around with them and, put on a white coat and followed them around the hospital for a a couple of days, and I said, yeah. I I think I would like to apply for, you know, a job. And then I went to, you know, through school, and I I'd actually been interested in did a lot of premed courses because I was thinking about being a physician assistant.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:21:12]:
Mhmm. Wow. Okay. So we've got this fascination with, medicine. We've got business side of you. You're then seeing patients and saying, okay. They need to communicate better and developing a communication tool. Then you're like, I need a new skill set.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:21:28]:
I can do more with what I already have, becomes paramedic first, like, leading new brand new course, and you're in it. And then you say you're approached by companies. How does that happen? How do you get approached by companies to develop and innovate something new?
Ron Richard [00:21:45]:
Well, going back to when I developed that communication board, I was contacted by someone at a a a journal, a respiratory journal, and they'd heard about what I worked on. So I ended up writing, a a white paper, and it got published. And after it was published, I got contacted by a medical manufacturing company in Kansas City that was interested in licensing and distributing that product. So Mhmm. That was my first encounter with the what I call medical manufacturing world, and and I really got fascinated by that and how the engineering and how you take a concept or an idea and then eventually transform that and commercialize it. And so I ended up getting a degree in business administration and then started working on my masters, which I never finished. But I, I really enjoyed product development, product management, and, again, that's another whole chapter in my book about how to take something from an idea, from a concept to, commercialization and getting it on the market.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:23:01]:
Yeah. It doesn't sound like it happens overnight or particularly quickly from this town
Ron Richard [00:23:07]:
to this And, you know, the one of the the questions that I posed with you that I discussed, you know, with other people is is it getting easier, or is it getting more difficult to innovate and to get products on the market? Mhmm. And there's 2 parts to that. 1 is it is getting more difficult, because the FDA now is being more stringent and, strict about particularly things that you breathe on in terms of does it pass off particles? Is it toxic? Is there any kind of leachability to the plastic or whatever's coming in contact with your airway? So there's recently been a lot of recalls in the respiratory world, for instance. And now that's really red flag for the FDA is to be a lot more cognizant of the fact that if you're on a CPAP machine and you've been breathing on it for 3 or 4 years, and then you start to, you know, cough and you may get can't cancer, now they're starting to link. Oh, okay. Well, there's something in that machine that is giving off some sort of element that's now getting into your lungs, and you're breathing this toxic, fumes in or whatever. And so that's that's taking longer because the toxicology testing, for instance, and the leachability and all those tests that are being performed are done by special labs like Nelson Labs or, labs up in Minnesota that that, have this incredibly expensive testing gear. And the tests can take anywhere from 6 weeks to 2 or 3 months because they have to incubate all these different chemicals and and components, and then at the end, create a report about what the find findings are.
Ron Richard [00:24:52]:
So that that's one of the things that lengthens what I call the time to market, and you just have to factor that into your project plan. The the on the flip side, though, you know, the innovation in 3 d, printing has now enabled inventors or manufacturers to actually get functional workable prototypes in place much quicker than they could do 10 years ago. So that innovation has accelerated in in part how you can maybe speed up certain elements and parts of the, the project plan is by utilizing 3 d printers. And the other thing that's being now, more refined and and put into practices is using artificial intelligence, particularly if you're doing clinical trials to, try to filter your patient population to who you think are gonna be the best match for the drug that you're gonna be testing or the product, a medical device, or whatnot. And so, AI is becoming more and more used even though it's been around since 19 fifties. All of a sudden, you know, they change the terminology to, you know, make this as, like, this big buzzword. But I started working with AI back in 20 2010 with, IBM, with the Watson project, and it's it was a supercomputer system. And and now, you know, you got the computing part of it down to where, you know, it's smaller, it's faster.
Ron Richard [00:26:21]:
You know, you've got server farms, all all kinds of things that integrate data. And it's all about combining analytics and then getting some kind of reasonable, sensible, and reproducible outcome that's highly predictable.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:26:34]:
That takes me to a question you had about wearables and patient monitoring that could be happening, and used more readily by clinicians and physicians in their workplace with their patients, for instance. I mean, to have people being able to do hemodialysis at home for instance, and have somebody. In an office somewhere watching all of the people at home doing dialysis. It's it's, it's incredible. And we talk about flexibility within our workforces as a increases the capacity of the workforce because of that ability for people to do jobs just a little bit outside of what they used to do. But then we've got a complete replacement for some of the parts. Like, you don't have to have a nurse going out to the home to do a blood pressure and a SAT monitor on a patient at home because they can have things at home. Tell us more about these wearables that you're kind of noticing.
Ron Richard [00:27:33]:
Yeah. So I had the, I had a a great experience. I got to work at Fitbit. I don't know if you've ever heard of Fitbit, but I got to work on a a watch that could detect sleep apnea and heart rate variability, and this was back in 20 2014.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:27:50]:
Right.
Ron Richard [00:27:50]:
And so that's evolved now to where Samsung and Apple and all these companies have, watches that you can wear, and it shows you your steps, which is pretty basic. But looking at saturation, heart rate variability, and the quality of sleep, I think it gives patients or people that that are using wearables, it gives them some immediate feedback to make fine tuning adjustments to their lifestyles of, like, okay. I see, you know, I drank, I drank 2 Cokes before I went to bed, and I didn't sleep very good. My heart rate variability was bad. Yeah. My saturation was okay, but my my sleep hygiene issues, I've gotta start, you know, doing something different. And so if you have that feedback from, you know, the wearable, I call the Internet of things, and you've got somebody like, the big thing in sleep right now is there's there's a lot of job openings for people that can go to, courses and become a sleep coach. Mhmm.
Ron Richard [00:28:50]:
And what they do is they get online with you like we're doing now and talk to you about, well, what's bothering you about your sleep hygiene and go through. Mhmm. Could be insomnia. It could be my legs are twitching. It could be I'm snoring, and I'm bothering my spouse or whatever. There's all kinds of things. But sleep coaches, that's a big, big emerging part of the sleep industry that a nurse or respiratory therapist could do a side gig and make, you know, some additional money, and it's pretty re rewarding as well. But, you know, the the, the things that I I kinda also most recently worked on in terms of wearables, there's a lot of rings that you can wear now, and believe it or not, you can get very accurate heart rate.
Ron Richard [00:29:30]:
You can get sp02. You can get, a number of different physiological metrics off of that. And then that's uploaded, you know, through the beauty of a cloud and using either Bluetooth or Wi Fi. That's where all the connectivity is coming in. And I really envision like, right now, I'm working on a remote monitoring project with a big company, and all we do is we monitor truck drivers that are that have sleep apnea, we're doing it all remotely. And we have sleep coaches in place. We have a medical director that can take, you know, questions and things like that. But it's enabled truck drivers to continue to do their job and do it safely.
Ron Richard [00:30:06]:
And it's, you know, reduced accidents by 80, 90%.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:30:11]:
Wow. Fascinating cutting edge kind of places to be working. Yeah.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:30:16]:
Mhmm. And
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:30:17]:
then did you mention that you work with other clinicians and physicians in that, inventor stages or setting up their business. How how does that work?
Ron Richard [00:30:29]:
Well, it's usually people that have talked to other clients that I've worked with, so it's referral word-of-mouth, or they go online and they look up books about, you know, inventions, and then they find me and they go to my website and schedule an appointment. So, primarily, I focus on I don't do any pharmaceuticals. I just do all device inventions.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:30:49]:
I see.
Ron Richard [00:30:49]:
And I pretty much specialize in respiratory and and sleep.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:30:53]:
Right. Okay. And what are you noticing about the people who are coming up with these ideas? Are they like you that they're noticing that the patients would do better if, or is that the type of how does innovation come about? How does invention come about?
Ron Richard [00:31:09]:
Well, the exciting thing to me because of what my experience with the that communication board is the the same thing. It's the seed that's planted in a clinician's mind that's always thinking about, how can we do this better? How can we advance, the the device that I'm using now? It works okay, but it couldn't be improved. And so what they do is they tinker around and make these improvements and, come up with what I call evolutionary, an evolutionary process. It's not revolutionary. It's it's evolving something that was made bay maybe back in the 19 fifties or sixties, and no one's really taken the time to improve on it. So, yeah, a lot of the the clinicians, and I think they're the best people to actually, design and do inventions like this and evolve products, is because every day, they're working with something that they're dealing with, patients. And they hear the complaints. They hear the frustration from the patients.
Ron Richard [00:32:04]:
Like, yeah, it does help me, but it's really not that easy to use.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:32:08]:
Yep. Yep. Yeah. And we hear that a lot.
Ron Richard [00:32:12]:
Mhmm.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:32:13]:
It just takes a it takes a certain person to say, well, let's make that better, or I think I could make that better, or I wonder how to make that better. It's not everybody.
Ron Richard [00:32:23]:
No. Because a lot you know, there's I'd say some people go to work every day, and they just use whatever they're given. And they're taught in medical school or in in nursing or whatever. The this is, you know, this is the syringe and the needle, and this is the medication, and, you know, you give somebody a shot or whatever or give them a breathing treatment. And you don't really think too much outside the box. But there are clinicians who are they use both parts of their brain, their right side and their left side. So they're creative and inventive, and they're curious, and, I think they truly have the best interest of the patient at heart, to improve, the experience that the patient is having with whatever product they're using. So, you know, they kinda look at something and go, well, have you ever thought about doing it this way? Mhmm.
Ron Richard [00:33:10]:
It it because I'll tell you, medical manufacturers, and I've worked for Fortune 500 companies and small startups. Engineering people, typically, it's like you you you you wanna connect a wire from point a to point b in the fastest way, and you don't really care or think about how easy it is to do or, you know, is it very, expensive or anything like that. You just wanna, you know, get your job done as an engineer. So a lot of engineers don't really take into consideration, well, how does it really make the patient feel? And does the patient really like it? I mean, it may work, but have you thought about making it, softer? Or like when I was working a lot with CPAP masks, the common complaint was my nose hurts up here. You know, the mask is hurting my face. So, a lot of advancements were made, and and what I started doing was taking engineers out to hospitals or out to home care companies to and and to do focus groups with patients and let them ask them questions. Well, what if we made this this way? You know, like the headgear or the mask made it softer, but, like, oh my gosh. That was eye opening that the engineers would go, well, we'll do that.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:34:22]:
Yeah. I think I can hear clinicians and physicians everywhere in the world saying, please send the engineers out to watch me work in my electronic medical record.
Ron Richard [00:34:31]:
Right. Yeah. Your e EMR EMRs are my my wife's a doctor, and she said the most frustrating part about her job anymore is charting. Yep. She spends she spends 80% of her time charting and 20% actually taking care of patients.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:34:48]:
Yes. Yes. And it's not just the recording of what happened in the chart note. It's all of the the pieces that take a a keystroke. Right? Mhmm. So just getting the information in, you know, there's tools being developed for some of that, but it's the everything about the workflow of the day, that you can you can clearly see that this wasn't invented for us.
Ron Richard [00:35:13]:
No. And, you know, kind of an element that I see and my wife and I talked about this over the weekend, and I asked her. I said, do you see AI ever taking a part in the more mundane parts of your job, like like charting, for instance. Is there some way AI could maybe help reduce your frustration with I'd like to spend more time with my patients, but if I get behind on charting, then it's like this thing all spirals out of control. So she said, yeah, I I could see that, but then I have to think about what's the legal ramifications if I use AI incorrectly, and I miss it it misdiagnoses or it does something that is gonna come back to me later in sort of a legal way.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:35:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. It's it's a fascinating, and we we hope that there are innovators out there who are thinking about both the clinicians, physicians, and the patients. Right? Because both are, as we move and change things, we're hoping to increase sustainability or increase compliance of patients or increase quality of life for either of us. It's, so very important innovation continues to happen. Ron, how do people contact you or get in touch with you if they have this great idea, they wanna move forward in something? What's the best place to find you? What is your book?
Ron Richard [00:36:30]:
The name of the book is Someday is Today, and, the subtitle I actually got it from a doctor that I talked to at Stanford. I did a a a lecture there about how to get innovation, you know, into your daily practice, into your life, and create, you know, maybe some income for from you. And he goes he said, I have all these great ideas, but they're in my coffee cup on my desk. But I and I don't know how to get them out. So that's the subtitle. It's get your ideas out of your coffee cup and on the market. Yeah. You know? And it and it just talks about taking action.
Ron Richard [00:37:02]:
You know? The simple step the first step is to take action. You know? Write your idea down. But you can get a hold of me through my website, inventing starts today.com, and I have a calendar on there, and you can just request, you know, con consult.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:37:17]:
Yeah. I mean, curious about, recalls. You mentioned recalls and potential litigation. How do, because I think that might even, like, paralyze or stop the whole idea moving forward for a lot of people is what if it doesn't work or harms people? What if there's litigation? What if there's recall? How how do you answer that question?
Ron Richard [00:37:43]:
The best way to mitigate that into, you know, is to take a conservative approach to what you're developing. So I'll go back to the word evolutionary versus revolutionary, and I talk about that and define it in the book. And when I hear somebody come to me with an invention, then they use the word, it's gonna revolutionize medicine. I get it gives me goosebumps. It's kind of like, so how are you gonna prove this? Because things that are revolutionary, typically, there could be more risk involved with it than something that's evolutionary. Because an evolutionary project or product to me is taking something that's already been proven and fine tuning it and enhancing it or making it better in in certain, you know, patient comfort, you know, things like that. So that that's a big part of it. It's like, what are you trying to accomplish? What's your what are your main goals? I I always say tell people, you've gotta come up with a 30 second elevator pitch about your idea.
Ron Richard [00:38:39]:
You can't talk to me for 10 minutes to try to explain to me and convince me. I've got this wonderful, great invention. It's like, tell me in 30 seconds what it does, how it's gonna help people. You know, is it more cost effective or whatever? And so, yeah. In this litigious environment that we're in, I caution people. Number 1 is make sure you have a good patent attorney. Mhmm. And you you do a thorough patent search.
Ron Richard [00:39:05]:
I I was working with a client once for almost a year, and I just assumed he'd gone to a patent attorney. And we've been working through prototypes and all this, and then one day, that topic came up with some conversation, and he was like, you know, I I I've never, gone through, the process of filing a patent or having a patent search done. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Put the brakes on here. Let's stop everything, and let's because you could go to market with a product, start selling it, and then get sued because you've infringed on somebody else's patents.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:39:39]:
Right. Yeah. Okay. Good advice. Thank you. Because I think that might help people who have an idea, but they don't wanna even start because they're worried. But, no, you've got some advice on there are ways to do this more sensibly, with potentially less risk or with at least understood risk. So yeah.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:40:00]:
Thank you. Anything else for people who have, who recognize themselves as an innovative person? They've got no interest in moving something forward, but they'd like to pull ideas out into the world or anything else for those people who use both sides of their brain, as you say Mhmm. What you would recommend for them.
Ron Richard [00:40:19]:
I you know, that that was part of the the talk that I did last week with the University of Jacksonville was there are clinicians or doctors that they don't wanna get involved in in an invention or a product development process. So for them, what I tell them is if if you have a contact at a a pharmaceutical company or at a a medical manufacturer, that there's certain devices that you like and you say, that's a real high quality company. Their sales reps are great. Their clinical people are great. All you have to do is just start a conversation with somebody there and say, you know, I have really got an interest in being involved with, maybe you've got a panel of doctors that, work with your company. Could I be an adviser? Get on your adviser committee, and be a consultant. And who who would I contact or who could I call at your company to introduce myself and give them my CV? And I've seen that turn into a it's lucrative in terms of doing speaking at conferences and things like that. But then they also get involved with, a steering committee to help with, like, developing a clinical protocol.
Ron Richard [00:41:31]:
And if they're involved in a hospital and it's okay with the administrator, they could become part of a clinical trial for a medical manufacturer. And at the end of the day, this doctor or clinician has helped now innovate and and come you know, they didn't have to do all the, you know, the engineering and all that kind of stuff. But they're an integral part of a team, and they're a valued asset. And so I encourage people if they have a desire to expand their, horizons and, you know, create a little bit of income on the side, just talk to your sales rep or talk to the the manufacturer rep or the clinician person that is coming and helping you at the hospital. Introduce yourself and to say, I've got an interest in in getting involved with your company.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:42:17]:
Excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much for this conversation. I think it's really helped to those of you who are who always look at something and say, this could be better. Or those of you who are like, I could go and do something interesting in the world. So thank you very much for this conversation, Ramon.
Ron Richard [00:42:32]:
Thank you, doctor Smith.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:42:34]:
You guys have a wonderful rest of your week, everyone. Bye.
Ron Richard [00:42:37]:
Bye bye.
Dr. Sarah Smith [00:42:38]:
Thank you for being part of the sustainable clinical medicine podcast. If you'd to learn more or join us to help you get home with today's work done, go to chartingcoach.ca. There you'll find all the information on the premier lifetime access charting champions program that is helping physicians get home with today's work done with all the proven tools, support, and community you need to create time for your life outside of medicine. We would love to see you there. Until next time. Thanks for listening.
