Editor's Note: At AudiologyNow 2007, a press conference was held at the Siemens' booth announcing a new alliance between Siemens Hearing and Westone Laboratories. Below is an edited transcript of that press conference. Additional details can be found on the Siemen's Web Channel at Audiology Online.
David Sawyer (Siemens): Thank you everyone for coming. My name is David Sawyer and I am the Vice President of Marketing for Siemens Hearing Instruments and I want to welcome you to this joint Siemens / Westone press conference. We do have some very exciting news and we feel very confident that it is going to change our industry. To begin, I would like to introduce to you our president and the CEO of Siemens Hearing Instruments, Christi Pedra.
Christi Pedra (Siemens): Thank you, David. Good afternoon and welcome. I am delighted to see so many of you here today. We are pleased to be announcing an industry first - Siemens Hearing Instruments has entered into an alliance with Westone and we are going to share more of the details with you over the next couple minutes, but one of the things that I think is significant about the announcement: it's a very innovative way for us to help our customers - hearing care professionals - provide a higher level of service to their patients, as well as to help the hearing impaired return to the world of sound much sooner.
With that said, I would like to introduce the next speakers. You will hear more about the technology, and you will also hear from two of our customers who are currently using the iScan™ process. But, what I would like to also emphasize, before I introduce the next speaker, is that this is just another illustration of Siemens commitment to bring great technology to the world of the hearing impaired, and help the hearing impaired hear better, and help the hearing care professionals serve their patients better. So the next speaker I would like to introduce is, Lynn Kehler, who is the President and CEO of Westone.
Lynn Kehler (Westone): Thank you Christi. Westone is really excited about this alliance with Siemens. For the very first time in the industry, a hearing care professional can make one, single online order of a Siemens hearing instrument and a Westone custom hearing ear mold and get both delivered to a patient within just a matter of days, without any kind of ear impressions or old fashioned paper order forms having to go through the mail. Plus, we keep the iScan impression files on hand so if the Labrador eats the ear piece we can put another one out and send it right to the patient quickly. Going forward, I have to believe that this type of system will serve as the industry standard platform for delivery of hearing instruments, custom earpieces, and other products to the hearing care profession. Westone believes in this technology and we think the industry is ready for it. And we are just delighted to be working with a company like Siemens to make this technology available on a widespread basis. Thank you for coming today and I would like to turn this one over to Bill Lesiecki from Siemens.
Bill Lesiecki (Siemens): Thanks Lynn. I'm glad everybody is here, especially the members of the trade press. And we just want to take a minute to talk a little bit about the technology and the impact that we see it having on the marketplace. Many of you know that the iScan, the first dispenser-based, hearing-professional-based, ear impression scanner on the market, is now out there in over 900 locations in the U.S. We've been doing custom product ordering with iScan and it has been going very well. Of course most of you have seen the iScan. We have a complete electronic ordering system based around it - our mySiemens, web-based online ordering. This site has been creating a lot of electronic orders, as many of you know.
The biggest benefits of this tool are the enhanced workflow from the audiologists' perspective, and the ability to validate orders before they ever get to the manufacturer.
I think most people realize that when orders are being made on a paper order form, you have lots of choices and some fairly complicated systems to order with. You can make mistakes. When that order comes in-house, if there is such a mistake made, we have to kick that order out of the system and then call that audiologist, which slows down the whole buying process. Sometimes the audiologists are difficult to get a hold of because they are so busy.
Well, electronic ordering eliminates all of that because it pre-validates the order ahead of time. The order flows through the system much faster. It enhances the turnaround time and ultimately, the system is all about getting hearing instruments, and now ear molds, back to hearing health care professionals faster and more efficiently so that they can serve their patients faster and more efficiently.
I think the alliance with Westone makes great sense because when we went out and interviewed a lot of our customers, what they told us was that from the ear mold side of things, the biggest hurdle was the turnaround time because most people use U.S. mail to ship impressions to the manufacturer. It's a different business model from the ear mold side of the business because it's a lower cost item (so it is not typical to use overnight shipping), yet it's a critical step in the fitting of the BTE hearing instrument. So turnaround time became a real point of focus.
If the ear mold does not fit properly, you do not have a good fit no matter how well that BTE is doing, so when we got together and started discussing this with Westone and our customers, it only made sense to put an electronic ordering system in with the ear molds. Now, hearing healthcare professionals can order BTEs and ear molds at the same time. As Lynn [Kehler, Westone] stated those are returned to the audiologist in just a few days. They're back in use by the patient a lot faster, and you have a number of other efficiencies that are built into the system, for example, impression files stay on hand for remakes, etc. These are important features.
Siemens and Westone have invited a couple of audiologists who have been utilizing this system to speak with you. Keep in mind that the Siemens-Westone alliance for ear mold ordering went online only a month ago. but we do have people already, because of the number of iScans we have in the market, who were willing and able to take immediate advantage of it.
So I'm going to introduce two people. That's Cindy Schaffer, who is from North Carolina and has a private practice there, and Dale Lalone from Portland Maine, who also has a private practice. So with that, Cindy, I'll start with you, to give you a little perspective from her side of how the system is working and what it's doing for her.
Cindy Schaffer: Thank you. I want to thank Siemens-Westone for joining in this alliance because I had never seen such a big boon to my service model as I've seen in the last month, being able to order my ear molds online through iScan.
Not only do I get them back quickly, I don't have to give up control of that impression to the US Postal Service. I don't have to give up control of that impression to stamping machines, or to weather conditions. So when my impression is emailed and delivered to Westone with iScan, its configuration is identical to what I took five minutes before.
So, when I get the ear mold back, my fits have been perfect. I've ordered about 20 ear molds now through iScan with Westone, and I have not had to remake a single mold. I have not had to buff a mold. I have not had to reshape or resize anything. The fits have all been very natural, very comfortable, and that's really very impressive to the patient. Patients don't usually look at the impression as a critical part of the fit of the hearing aid, and audiologists don't want them to think that way either. This [iScan] has been a really nice way to focus on the hearing aid fitting, while I focus more time on the patient. Thank you very much.
Dale Lalone: I've been a Siemens and Westone customer for a long time. The biggest issue that I've always had with delivery of ear molds from my patients is the US Mail. It would be anywhere from two to three weeks before I'd get the ear mold back. Because we can now scan the impression and email it directly to the manufacturer, I've seen ear molds come back in just four or five days. The service has been of phenomenal quality. I had a patient who came in a couple of weeks ago. He had a very important meeting he had to attend in five days. So I put the order through, and the turnaround time was fantastic. I think Bill sums up all the other benefits we see in iScan, but to me, that fast turnaround and quality of the product we are actually seeing now is fantastic.
Bill Lesiecki (Siemens): You know, from the perspective of our group, I don't think we have a lot more to say formally at this point. Again, we really wanted the opportunity, here at the biggest trade show in the world, to make this announcement, to let everybody know what is going on. But, I would like to ask members of the trade press if you have any questions. Anybody? Yes, Paul Dybala from Audiology Online.
Paul Dybala: This would be used for ear molds in all styles? There is no limit to the shapes or sizes? Any shapes?
Bill Lesiecki (Siemens): The question from Paul Dybala, from Audiology Online, is whether or not these ear molds will be able to be made in all styles and all materials.
At this time, we're in Phase I of this project. And right now the materials are acrylic-based, so they are hard ear molds. We're offering about ten different styles, but we estimate that 30% or more of the typical type of ear molds that are being built are covered at this point.
As we continue in the industry to develop materials of different kinds that work through the SLA process, the rapid, prototyping manufacturing process, like the Siemens LasR™ process, or the Westone FIT™ process, we'll expand that out to customers. A question from David Kirkwood of The Hearing Journal, David?
David Kirkwood: Do you think that in the future all ear molds will be made this way?
Bill Lesiecki (Siemens): Lynn, I'm going to have you answer this question. David Kirkwood is asking if we'll get to the point where 100% of ear molds can be built this way.
Lynn Kehler (Westone): I don't know particularly about 100%. We've got some special purpose ear molds that might be made by hand on a longer term basis. But with the availability of suitable, pliable malleable soft materials, we will certainly cover a huge percentage of market.
Bill Lesiecki (Siemens): A question from Karl Strom of The Hearing Review, Karl.
Karl Strom: How many iScans do you have deployed and how much growth do you see in this area?
Bill Lesiecki: At this point, we have over 900 iScan installations in the market. I think, right now, we can say that we have only scratched the surface here. At the moment, the customers who are using iScans, and ordering electronically from us, are working directly with Siemens, and now Westone. But iScan is not a proprietary, closed platform. I think that's something important we need to clear up, because sometimes people think it is a Siemens-only platform. iScan is not.
What happens right now, when a scan is made using iScan, it's encrypted. But all that is required to use that scan is a decryption key which Siemens will license to anyone, just as we did with Westone. So Karl, quite frankly, we see that as more and more manufacturers have the internal capabilities to build hearing aids this way, the better our ability to deliver quickly. More and more manufacturers will be interested in using scanning. And we hope, at that point, that they will use iScan because by then we'll have many more of them in the marketplace.
I want to again thank all of you for attending this press conference. If you would like additional information please feel free to speak with us afterward, or we will have information via our website at www.usa.siemens.com/hearing.
