Creating a Care Map for Living With MacD

On This Episode

Co-hosts Shawn Doyle and Dawn Prall begin the episode with the idea of creating a care plan for a macular degeneration diagnosis. This care plan can be used as a map to live with the disease and manage fear and adversity. They encourage not only those with MacD, but caregivers and loved ones, to find information centers, support systems, and strategies to navigate life with vision loss. If you’re not a planner, they discuss how to get started.

In the next segment, Dawn interviews Mark Greget as the episode’s featured special guest. Mark Greget is an Assistive Technology pioneer and CEO and founder of NuEyes. He tells Dawn about his career journey, passion for helping others, and the empowering ability of Assistive Technology. Mark also brings forth the importance of relationship building, especially with doctors and retina specialists, in the distribution process. Through communication and trust, Mark successfully partners in the medical sphere to provide NuEyes Smartglasses to patients.

NuEyes is a technology company that uses augmented reality Smartglasses
to change lives within a matter of minutes. Mark introduces their Smartglasses, the e2 and e2+, which have variable magnification, contrast, text to speech
capabilities, and digital accessibility, meaning you can stream television, movies, and check your email without having to change contrast or magnification.

The episode ends with the Shawn and Dawn exchanging views on the importance of using magnification products correctly, a process which involves practice and being patients with oneself. They conclude with an entertaining round of Eye Trivia and information sharing on additional resources.

What We Discuss in this Episode

The seventh episode covers the following featured topics:

• “…if you're diagnosed with macular degeneration, instead of just being upset or grieving or being sad, why not come up with a strategy? So, in other words, an action plan, a strategy, a map, whatever to navigate through your diagnosis and to navigate through your life.” (2:49)
• “Assistive Technology is something that's really enabling somebody to deal with what they have in a positive way. It's a positive way but it's empowering somebody. It's really changing somebody's life for the better where they can go to school they can go to work; they can see a loved one's face. It's these almost immediate reactions of Assistive Technology empowering somebody to go out and do and hopefully do what I'm doing.” (15:05)
• “NuEyes, we are a technology company that is using augmented reality Smartglasses, or inventing new versions of augmented reality Smartglasses, to help different verticals and different passions of ours, from the Assistive Technology space, low vision space, to the medical space…” (19:25)
• “They put those on their head, these are glasses, folks, by the way, it's a computer on your head. You put them on, and somebody says, ‘Oh my god, I can see my husband across the room, and I still want to be married to
  him.’ I swear to God, somebody said that to me.” (20:07)
• “One of the things that that we get all the time, every day, is, ‘Well, why doesn't my doctor know more about the device or know more about what's out there for me? Why aren't they connecting that?’ So speak to that a little bit with because I think that doesn't make sense to our listeners to people who are not us who are not on the inside? They see a huge disconnect.” (23:00)
• “An AI component or artificial intelligence component that we patented and granted for optical character recognition on a pair of augmented reality Smartglasses. So really, what that means is you can push a button, and it'll read back to you in real time, instantly.” (27:44)
• “At the end of the day, we're experts in user experience because of the consumer group that we're in. So for us, we really landed on Smartglasses.
  They're a little bit smarter than my coke bottle glasses I wear every night. It’s really like you said, a computer on your face. Luckily, it's getting lighter, smaller and less expensive. That's really where we started in 2016, with the NuEyes Pro.” (30:13)
• “I think it's really critically important to learn to use your magnification products correctly. A lot of people think, you pull out a device out of the box, you hook it up, you plug it in, push go, and boom, right. It doesn't really work that way in real life. What really is important is that you have to realize that it takes practice and patience. I've seen my wife make remarkable progress with her reader, because she was willing to practice and take her time with it, and to have patience. Now on a daily basis, it's reading documents, all sorts of amazing things that's really changed the quality of her life by being able to use those readers. But it did take practice and patience in the beginning.” (45:54)

Quotables

• “If you're telling people what they want, you're going to go out of business, if you're listening to what people want, then you're going to be successful.” – Mark Greget
• “…it's about helping people who can't see or who are losing their precious vision understand there are tools and technology out there that's accessible, usable.” – Dawn Prall
• “I think at the end of the day, we are we are a technology company. But most importantly, we're an advocate. We will not stop, we will not quit inventing technology for the visually impaired. This is more than just a business. This is more than just an idea. This is a passion. To be able to change somebody's life with our glasses is super humble and super appreciative. That’s why we get up in the morning every day and deal with deal with crazy stuff.” – Mark Greget

Recommended Resources

- https://www.nueyes.com

- https://www.nueyes.com/nueyes-e2

- https://www.nueyes.com/nueyes-pro-3

- https://amdcentral.org

- http://www.supportsight.org

- http://www.mymacdlife.org

- https://vispero.com

- https://www.healthyvisionassociation.com

- https://www.novartis.com

- https://www.centricbank.com

- https://hinklestein.com