How a Trauma Surgeon Reinvented Senior Safety

And none of them had those I fallen and I can't get up buttons.

“Literally, that's how fall call was born.”

We wanted to make this a non-stigmatizing safety lifestyle product. Dr. Shay Gregg is a visionary physician trauma surgeon entrepreneur and the founder of fall call solutions. Drawing from his experience caring for critically ill patients and older adults. He is transforming senior safety through innovative technology that connects people to emergency care when they need it most. People will ask, "You know, what's your differentiator? Why you different from all these major companies?"

As a physician who owned this company, I wanted to build something different. What I wanted to do with fall call is actually build something that takes the values of clinical care. And the principles and actually brings it to your mobile device. Having a accessible, affordable, simple platform, and we're half the price of any of the big three that are out there right now as far as the companies.

“But we are really, I think, trying to make an impact on the medical alert world.”

It spans the goal. Like a super high school, internet helpers. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the fall call. It's not over! I'm telling how we're... The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy.

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Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. Where we have the privilege of talking to some of the best disruptors and business people. And entrepreneurs, and today we have the privilege of talking to one of America's best actors. All right, so yeah, we got a special guest here in our new Miami studios. And what's your name? Where are you from? And what kind of doctor are you?

Sure. So, my name is Dr. Shade Greg, and I am a trauma surgeon, burn surgeon, intensive care doc. And I practice in Trombo Connecticut. Oh, wow, Connecticut. Hey, say I'm from originally from Glassenbury. Oh, nice. Excellent. All right, so you know the later land, you know that we've got traffic and a lot of advice.

And so Trombo, yeah, actually it's funny because our last guest, right, he had we both had the same second degree, well, he got a worse, right.

So I was around eight or nine. I had a second degree soup burn all of my hand, right, very hot, but he was around two and all from his, you know, the whole entire pot went on him, right. And so yeah, he had, you know, burns that affected him throughout his childhood, which gave him bullying, right?

“Because he just had those wounds and scars, right? And so yeah, I mean, you must see a lot of stuff, right? So talk to us about being a trauma doctor.”

Sure. So again, I strongly believe that medical careers choose you. And actually, I tell that to my medical students and the residents that I educate on regular basis. And you know, I started to work on an ambulance at a relatively young age. I was going to say, yeah, I have to be some EMT work there. And of course, exactly. And honestly, what I found is those calls on the side of the highway in the middle of the night, just they were the ones that I just felt that I made the biggest difference. I mean, I was a basic EMT, I was a younger kid, like, you know, early college years.

And I responded to these calls and people were just devastated. They were thrown from their vehicles. They were just had some horrible injuries. And it allowed me to use my training. It required a lot of creativity, which is sort of my foundation and eventually, let me to create the company that I started later on.

But the bottom line is, I knew that that's what I was going to do.

Yeah. And I knew that I did not want to be like the trauma surgeons that were in the hospital that was dropping the patients off. I actually wanted to be, you know, the dielectric trauma surgeon. One that actually wants to listen the report to be a different type of trauma surgeon. Instead of like, thank you goodbye, you know, that's just not me. So I was determined to do this. So instead of thank you goodbye, what's the other side of it? You know, what's kind of like, what do you mean on your kind of trauma surgeon?

Sure. So I think, you know, I strive to make sure that trauma is, well, first of all, trauma intrinsically is a team exercise. All right. There's no eye in trauma. There just isn't. Yeah. Yeah. And so trauma is like, from the first responders, right, to the EMTs, to when they're on your table. Exactly. And so therefore, we need to listen to those people who provide some of that initial life saving care. We need to stop the room, listen to them. They are just as important in fact, sometimes more important than anything that we are administering at least initially.

If they flip them wrong with the neck injuries or I mean, yes, I mean, yeah, I mean, trauma is a lot of things. It could be, you know, it's fun.

One of the scenarios is like, there's a lightning strike, you know, for first responders, right, and you get first on the scene like the EMTs or the first responders.

“And it's just like, you're not looking for the people that are screaming. You know, you're looking for the silent ones, right? And so yeah, I mean, like I said, you must have seen a lot of stuff come across with table.”

So yeah, you're talking to the whole entire team of people that that's see the patient before it ends up on your table. And what are the biggest mistakes that kind of that first responders team make? Honestly, I do not see a lot of mistakes with the exception of spending too much time on the field.

Time is blood loss trauma. And sometimes the most important fluid that we say that we give someone is actually diesel.

“And the reason why is because you need to put your foot on the gas and get the patient loaded as quickly as possible, because if there's internal injuries, the only thing you can do for them is operate on the patients and actually stop the bleeding.”

So the good news is if there's visible bleeding on the scene, you know, we have this new course that was started through the American College of Surgeons called Stop the Bleed. And they put on the turnicates. We are, you know, I am a big proponent of this course. We're the 15th state to pass legislation to mandate this training. And, you know, people are making a difference with that. But still, if you have internal bleeding, unstable, low blood pressure patients, you need to get them to the hospital as quick as possible.

So you do not, so I would say of the mistakes that I see, which are relatively rare, it's spending too much time on scene acting quick is, you know, you got to be on your toes and that field report every second matters. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

“So I'm honestly, what's some of the, can you talk about some of the craziest things that you've seen in trauma?”

I'll simply say, again, you know, it's interesting as a trauma surgeon. You know, you would think it's a career that would give you flashbacks. Remember your big cases and these sorts of things. Because it's so striking, you know, and I can say that, yes, I remember some major cases where, you know, if there's a loss of vitals, there's an indication actually to literally, you know, inside someone chest and actually beat a heart back to life, you know, there's a situation in indications for that.

But I mean, there's other cases, which, you know, what I remember most is if a teen and a system work together and ultimately,

a produced a person that lived and will sell those, I describe it as, you know, it's, you have success when someone can celebrate the next birthday. Yeah, you know, and I will tell that. So that's what's going on through my head. I'm just like, wow, this dude must have literally saved so many lives, you know, because it just counts on that, you know, that final, yeah, like I said, you must have seen it all and helped a lot of different situations. It's been an incredible journey. I can say, and like I said, it's, it's all about building the right system. So you can basically, and I do describe it as an orchestra. I feel like I conduct the orchestra and yes, I might do the, you know,

important maneuver for stopping bleeding in the OR, but if that orchestra is implying together and getting that patient to the OR within 5, 10, 15 minutes, you know, then anything that I can do is not going to be helpful by honestly. So the, the things that I remember the most are those situations and those patient care moments where pre-hospital work got the patient there quickly. We quickly resuscitated the patient, we made a diagnosis, we went to the OR, we made an intervention, and then they get to celebrate the birthday again.

Yeah. That is what the magic of trauma is for me. And so you are quickly mentioned that you kind of opened business or a clinic. Yeah. So, you know, it's very interesting. So I went into medicine. I chose to go into medicine actually medicine sort of chose me in such a way back in high school, because I grew up in a household where my mother was an entrepreneur. Interesting. And as an entrepreneur, you obviously have your struggles. Yeah. And she definitely dealt with many struggles. She was in business with my stepfather at that time and soon to be adoptive father and you know, she would talk about, oh, you know, I can't make payroll. I can't do this. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur.

That was actually, that was something I said, I never wanted to do. So I chose medicine because it was basically you pass the test you make it to the next level. Yeah. Plus, I knew that I really, you know, enjoyed serving other people.

Not getting the care they needed. I decided to go into medicine, actually, and I wanted to stay away from entrepreneurship. Okay. Well, you know, fast forward. I'm about 38 years old or so. This is now about, you know, 10, 12 years ago.

“And I noticed that most of my patients were older adults and older adults who fall down the stairs who fall from standing, but they had horrible injuries, rib fractures, hip fractures, head injuries.”

Wow. Okay. And none of them had those. I fallen and I can't get up buttons. We expect that they have. Yeah.

You know, you see the commercials on TV. And I'm asking, I'm asking why don't you have them. Oh, they make me feel old. It's stigmatizing. No, I feel ugly. All right. I don't need that. And they're on the floor for four, six, eight hours. There's sometimes going to, you know, renal failure because they're so dehydrated and to Apple watch, interestingly. Yeah. Apple watch totally inspired me. I said, this might be the future of healthcare and emergency response. Okay. So it was at that point. I went on now. Yeah. I got one on now. Actually, and then as it's running my app.

Who, who Apple watch? Well, actually, this is one of the accessories that go with the whole ecosystem, actually. So this is my push button, like, you know, it'll activate and help call if I push it right now.

But Apple watch basically came out and I said, this might be something that people find attractive. Yeah. And it could potentially call for help.

“I feel younger and out older. Exactly. Well, exactly. And this was the time where people were just like, oh, what's the purpose of the Apple watch? What is this? I think it was around 2015.”

And what I said is, if there's an accelerometer in that, I'm going to build a full detection algorithm. It's going to help the older population. Perfect. And so literally, I was on my birthday in 2015 and I, you guys, screened down to my wife, I said, honey, I'm going to start a business. This is after we just had our third child actually in eight. Yeah. And she's like, okay. That's fine. You know, she knows that I have like that innovative forward thinking. But I've she says, okay, sure. No problem. So I literally, that's how fall call was born. This new business that basically transformed the standard home base station landline into an app that actually has grown into an international company at this point.

That sounds incredible. And it makes perfect perfect sense.

And so were you able to patent this? I mean, it seems like, and that was the yes, right? Yes. All right. That's amazing. Yeah. So, so the first thing that I had explained the path is the patent, the accelerometer from us from a certain like height or something. I mean, yeah, explain what it is. I started thinking about this actually in early January and actually in years before. And what I knew is that not all falls need an ambulance. Yeah. All right. They might need a family members. They might need their neighbors come over and help them out for a lift assist, et cetera.

And whereas other falls do. And so I actually drew out, literally, I have the original piece of paper. The, the basis for the patent where I said, okay, the accelerometer samples, the number of movements that people make are the number of motions and in the three axes.

“And I said that the sampling rate was very important to the sensitivity of that ability to detect a fall.”

And that was the basis of the patent actually, and we have subsequently gotten another four patents going on five patents. So there's, I mean, now it hopefully will be a six patent portfolio on wearable technology, specifically even on Apple Watch and other types. And we actually said that based on your sampling rate that you could distinguish between low falls falls from sitting, which will, you know, contact family members and, and you know caregivers. Whereas high falls falls from standing will contact love will contact the central monitor system and actually get the ambulance there, should you need it.

Yeah. And this actually was walking hand in hand with those clinical observations, it's just, you know, you don't tend to get is hurt when you fall from sitting. You can don't get me wrong, but when you fall from standing, you can really do some damage. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I mean, as a wilderness medic, I mean, it's just it's one of those things that, you know, you fall from higher heights, what do you know, kinetic energy produces more injury. Yeah, and so that was really the basis of the patent portfolio and we did the research on early Apple Watch. We were dropping mannequins, you know, I served as a fall dummy as well myself.

And you talk to us a little bit about that.

“Sure, there's there's always patents in whatever you're looking up, you know, people have like, you know, good ideas and they filed for patent.”

So there are fall detection patents. Yeah, however, what I learned about patents in general is that it's about your methodology is about your system. Yeah, all right.

And nobody really patented this, this communication rate that ultimately predicts your ability to differentiate between low and high falls. Okay. So that was like, you know, if you were to, you know,

create a direct spear to what the basis of this patent portfolio is, that's it. Yeah. And so were you getting frustrated at first when you started looking into you had this great idea, you know, and then I was done you start looking into it. Where was there like some frustrations of like, oh, no, that's already this there, but you kind of just kept on going and then you found your niche. Actually, there wasn't much on this and on this topic in particular, it was supposed to be the differentiated fall aspect of things. And I fortunately have my, my intellectual property attorney, he was an engineer himself. Yeah, so he got it, you know, he got it, he understood and you know, I had a hypothesis, this was all about a hypothesis that, you know, that this relationship between accelerometer sampling rates and

the ability to have that resolution, that granularity of what fall type it was was important, but it made sense to me. And, but nobody really started described it. I looked in the literature, I looked at other things.

But this was something different. And he was fortunate to say, you know, he, he looked up and down, left and right for all this other IP that was out there and couldn't find a thing.

“And so where's the most revenue come from from licensing of the patent or the actual app that you've created?”

Walk us through that a little bit. Sure. So when you do something completely different that really doesn't exist, you know, you start with the direct consumer market. You know, in that year, so then you're still funding this whole thing. Well, and actually, we now initially, it was drafted self funded it because patents can get expensive. That whole rabbit hole. And it can be, yeah, it can be draining. Oh, it very much so. And actually, it was the patents, but even more so it was the programming. I needed to find the talent.

And I found that talent with the company that had these HP developers that worked, you know, for Hewlett Packard for years over the years and had that algorithmic thinking had the ability to build these are called state machines, which is the ability to actually build these algorithms. And I described what I wanted to achieve and then we went into the lab, they built the research app and everything else. That was very expensive. And that was very much where I realized that this was something that I was put on the surface to do. And so very much. That's a good thing.

Yeah, it is. When it starts snowballing, you're like, to big, you've, you just feel like you get and you get and you got it, you know. Yeah, exactly. And then when we started to see the data come back and then you, your hypothesis, just like, you know, I was a researcher for years, you know, you know, I'm not in not a basic science researcher, but a clinical researcher. Yeah, and I was fortunate to learn how to do really good research during my residency from amazing mentors.

And to be critical of this and not just what makes good data, right?

“Yeah, what makes good data in, and that's what I learned and, you know, we tested this over and over and over again.”

And then when I got the programming back and validated it, that's when I knew we had something that nobody has ever discovered. And so in those tests, right, you're, you're doing the falls, right? So you were in like hockey padding or literally gross actually. Okay, okay, yeah, I kind of try to imagine it. I'm like, yeah, I ain't doing those falls. That's no padding, you know. Yeah, but also, we, we had the pleasure of having multi sized manic. I was just thinking, yeah, that's the same size is different, which creates a different velocity, I guess, right, different patterns of the fall.

Yeah, but they're all weighted and actually we, we wanted to actually compare, you know, a human fall human falls with the mannequins and they validated out and plus this is written out in the literature. So we knew that we had a decent model. These were literally the fire mannequins that the fireman literally trained on and carry out of these burning structures. Okay, so they're weighted mannequins, appropriate weights. So they've already experienced traumas and falls.

Yeah, exactly, and honestly, you know, we throw off them so many times that, you know, they started to fall apart, but when I got that data back and got the algorithm and then validated it with the mannequins and human falls.

So once again, the revenue comes from either licensing or maybe selling data or from the actual app, walk us through that and kind of sure.

So right now, the majority of the revenue actually comes from the app itself, all right, interestingly. So we have thousands of people around, you know, whether it's in US, Australia, we're in Thailand, I've actually another app that's in six other countries at this point. So we're going to do a little bit of an example check in app, but a lot of the revenue is actually coming from the app sales and the connection to the monitor. Wow. We also have, again, as I mentioned earlier, we wanted to make this a non-stigmatizing safety lifestyle product.

So Apple Watch is one aspect, but I've also put, you know, work with companies to put transmitters in jewelry and other things, you know, this wristband that I'm wearing, you know, this is so people would not, they would not be embarrassed.

“To wear their medical or sister. It's smart, smart and, and honestly, that's what has grown and now also when you're talking jewelry, right, you want to give, you know, jewelry to your mom or dad that I started to get of age, right.”

And you're thinking, hey, I'm not, I can't be at home, right, you put one of these nice jewelry with, you know, I love you mom, but it's got that, you know, whatever tech in there.

You know, so it's there's that dual and like dual, like meaning, I guess, right. So yeah, that's, that's amazing.

You know, the worst thing that you can have, especially, and this has been happening for years in the industry, is that someone as a fall, a caregiver buys someone a medical or device. They're, they're loved one, they're adult, you know, they're mom, they're dad, they're whatever grandmother and it ends up on the bedroom, you know, it's on the countertop. It's hanging on the corner of the, on the bed. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That is the worst thing in the world. And it is so important to actually have an accessory portfolio that people are comfortable wearing. So in proud of, honestly,

“I've gotten plenty of phone calls saying, this is the most beautiful thing I wear it every day. If you're safe, that's the right thing.”

So how do you market this? So your, your main revenue comes from from the app and the accessories, right? So, and you're in several different countries. You say Thailand. So are you doing partnerships with the hospitals and the ER rooms or your marketing spending on Facebook or you have a social media presence?

Tell us about that and maybe some of the out of the box marketing that you guys have done.

Sure. So we actually partnered with a very popular marketing firm that has actually done some really big projects for shows that have traveled around the United States actually. And after seeing their work, they created a lot of online videos and things like that to try to explain the product. Because we're actually changing the mindset in many regards. People have traditionally, you know, had something where they're stuck at home. They push the button and then something goes off at home. This is you push the button and then your phone goes off wherever you are.

Yeah. That is very different. So we had to explain what that is. And so we have a whole social media campaign that's out there to try to explain that. Yeah. And then actually we've actually picked up a lot of movement organically. And most for most recently we've actually picked up. The ability to actually become a Medicaid based a technology. Yeah. So we are now reimbursed by Medicaid. We serve a variety of vendors where care coordinators right now are so important in the care of patients. Because healthcare is sort of migrating to the home in reality and people want to stay in their homes for the purposes of autonomy.

So the care coordinators with these various organizations, you know, we service maybe about 15 or so and we're part of the Medicaid plans and we're building it around the United States now. So between reimbursements and, you know, having a accessible affordable, simple platform. We're half the price of any of the big three that are out there right now as far as the companies.

“We are really, I think, trying to make an impact on the medical alert world.”

Yeah. So most of the family members will probably think, oh, we'll get like we'll get some cameras and we'll put them inside the house, right? But the problem with that is that unless they're monitoring the cameras, they don't see the fall. It doesn't give them a alert because it's not maybe tracking falls, right? And yours is it's tracking the fall. It's right away. You get in the alert, you know. So yeah, I mean, it seems like the obvious choice. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, there's just I can just name out a white spectrum of, you know, people that are starting to get Alzheimer's, right?

And, you know, as a physician who owned this company, I wanted to build something different.

“We talk about healthcare. We talk about clinical care. Okay, healthcare is in the news. It's talking about KPI's metrics costs these other things.”

I learned clinical care. I deliver clinical care. What I want to do with fall call is actually build something that takes the values of clinical care and the principles and actually brings it to your mobile device. It's something that's very important. So the concepts of communication and real time. Yeah. That's something different. Meeting the patient with our act as the sense of, you know, people over the age of 65 might have visual impairments might have other things. This is so important.

“As far as I call it empathetic design is really sort of like meeting the caregiver words at where the meeting the older adult were there at as well and provide an experience that from end to end.”

We can address some of the major problems through communication and acute emergency, et cetera in real time.

Because I can't provide that as a trauma person if I'm taking care of your loved one. I can't call you immediately, but if this app can do that and they know the location of their loved one and they know the air, you know the hospital they're going to et cetera. Then I feel like I'm contributing to better care hopefully quicker responses to our yeah and that's the name of the game and honestly, I don't think a lot of people understand people in the industry know healthcare. They know acronyms. They know prices. They know all the other things.

They don't know what it's like to actually hold the hand of someone and do end of life care in the middle of the night that compassion it sort of like, you know empathetic humanistic aspect of delivering care.

“And that's what I try to transmit into the fall call experience amazing so how do people find you.”

So actually you fall call calm and we'll actually just just say yeah, just call calm easy to remember. Absolutely. And they can visit the website. They can see what we do who we are most importantly.

You know, our social media pages actually have description. We're very active on you know the various different types of platforms. And I actually do my own customer service many times. So if people have questions they'll they're very surprised to have a surgeon or the CEO of the company actually pick up and you know answer questions about it. I'm not here to sell a platform. And in fact, as many times you're also saying this is not for your for your loved one necessarily, but you know you can try it or this might be good for you, et cetera. It's here that it's if you if it fits into your lifestyle and they're willing to use it.

Namely, the older adult, then you know, two thumbs up, then we're here for you. We're the right platform for you. All right. Well, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. You know, you know, you're like the first responder before the first responder. It's great. Thank you so much. Yeah. So and thank you guys for joining us. Honestly, we get the pleasure to talk to all the best doctors here and some incredible people doing the good work of, you know, realizing why they got into it. And yeah, doctors like he said, they just want to help people, you know, and now you're able to help people outside of the images.

Right. Absolutely. All right. So yeah. Thank you, everyone. And we'll see you again next time on living your legacy podcast. Cheers. Thank you.