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Welcome to The Mr. Beacon Podcast. This week I am talking to Kevin Allart, who heads up healthcare at SATO. SATO are one of the major players in auto identification. They make tags and readers and printers. But this is an incredible opportunity to get into the healthcare business. It's a huge opportunity for IoT, for AutoID. And Kevin has been working on this for years and has an incredible understanding. So I learned a huge amount from him in this discussion.
And also I had a great conversation about his, how he ended up as a Frenchman, working in Japan and his music taste, which are really aligned with mine. So one of my most enjoyable discussions, I've had many over the years and this is our 200th episode. So that is quite a body of interviews. We have spoken to an incredible range of people from many large companies and many small companies start-ups.
We've probably spoken to over 100 CEOs of start-ups in the IoT space. We've spoken to Cisco at least three times. A Rubar, a couple of times, Bluetooth Sieg, three or four times, GS1, many other standards bodies. And we've covered all kinds of technologies in this amazing IoT space. I guess the big themes about digital physical convergence.
And we've tried to span a technology, the use cases. I do urge you if you are getting into this area or you're a veteran and you're looking at another technology or another set of use cases, do look at our back catalog.
It's all audio. Most of the episodes were captured on video. If you want to see what the people that are leading these parts of the business look like, that's always something that's kind of given me a kick to actually meet and see leaders in this industry and understand a bit about them and their history. So I do want to thank them. I want to thank the the interviewees. I want to thank all the people that have supported us. The folks are at aim and all the people that have recommended us.
But most of all, I want to thank you for being at the other end of this. And I love meeting people that have listened to or seen a few of our episodes. It gives me a kick. And I really value any input feedback requests that the new providers. I have to say that the pace of our episodes has slowed down a little bit in recent weeks. Things have been super busy.
I really wanted to get on. I've been reticent to come out and speak publicly about what they're doing. There's a company that is launching Bluetooth beacons into space. So you can actually have a Bluetooth connection from a satellite directly to that. We want to get them on and they've agreed to do it. But it's tough to get them to do it.
So there's some great companies working in circularity at Eon. We want to get them on. So anyone that feels strongly about wanting to learn about something as a company that they think we should be interviewing. Let me know. We're always open to to that input. So that's enough naval gazing. Thank you again. And now on to the interview with Kevin. I hope you enjoy. The Mr. Beacon Ambient IoT podcast is sponsored by Williot bringing intelligence to every single thing.
So Kevin, welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast. It's a great pleasure to have you on. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. So Sato, this is the 200th episode of the Mr. Beacon podcast. I can't believe we've been going for so long. And it's great to have someone from Sato on. Your company was very special to me personally.
I had started at Williot back in 2017. And Sato was one of the very first companies to really believe in what we were doing. You're one of our first customers and also a great partner. You make all sorts of things to do with auto ID. And I think I first met your company at a Cooper conference, the company that does angle of arrival. But I think you're more famous for the printers and the tags and obviously you work in the health care business.
So I know I've just scratched the surface here. So maybe we should start this conversation off with you just giving a brief introduction to Sato, the company as a whole. And then your leader in the health care business. So we'll focus on that later on. But who are Sato?
Okay, so Sato is a global auto a IDC company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. We are more than 80 years old. We started as a company using bamboo to actually do packaging to package using bamboo to make sure that the parcels would be securely tight, fastened.
Then we made hand labels for supermarkets and then we invented the first thermal printer in the sixties. Okay. So we do. Yeah, we do have a long history of making things in Japanese. We said monozokudi, which means making things actually treat us to translations.
So we are printer vendor, but as you said, we also make tags. So we make standard labels. We make a rough at the tax. We make Bluetooth tags and we are becoming more than I would say we started as a vendor making printers and tags and in those recent days, we are more of global vendor of integrated a IDC solutions.
So you're doing software, hardware tags, the whole thing. Yeah, so I suppose when it comes to software, obviously we do work with partners. So software is not our core business. We do have some capacity to make some middle wells. So we are, we have the ability to facilitate integration of our solutions.
Right. We see end user WMS ERP, but we are not a software vendor. Right. So you do middleware and not applications. That would be a more accurate way of introducing you. So how big is the company?
So the company right now has 5,600 employees worldwide. It's a 1.3, 1.4 billion USD company worldwide. We've been growing a lot over the last years. We are, we have a physical presence in 26 countries and we are doing business in more than 90, you know, through our network of distributors and researchers. And what are the main drivers? What's kind of the main driver of revenue for the company?
If you look at the revenue breakdown, it's, you know, roughly 30 to 35% is coming from the hardware, meaning from the sales of printers. Around 50% is coming from the labors and the rest would be coming easier from software or from support and maintenance services. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, you have a significant presence here in the States. So you have some very large customers taking your labels and other products.
Yes. The US is one of the biggest markets for Sato. If you look at at the different regions, obviously Japan, we are number one, especially in healthcare when it comes to hospitals. We have 70% market share in Japanese hospitals everywhere. You will everywhere you go. If you are in jail, you will see a Sato printer and a Sato resband.
Yeah. And then the second biggest markets would be SOS East Asia. Since you know, we started international internationally in Singapore more than 20 years ago. But the US is also very big. And so full disclosure, I mean, this podcast, we cover things that are nothing to do with will you Sato is connected with will you so it's probably worth. At least me talking about that you and I don't worked too closely together on this but feel free to correct or add anything.
But you know, one of the things that your company is known for is printers for RFID and you've developed a printer that works with our battery free Bluetooth tags, which is super is really important for certain use cases where you want to do association between a tag and some metadata that might be printed on a label.
I think generally your printers encode data on the tag when it's RFID but that's not how it works in the in the ambient IoT world, the Bluetooth world, your printers will read our tags and do association in the cloud with data that then gets printed on the tags.
Basically comes to the same thing you have a label that's got a auto ID tag and it's printed and there's a link in the cloud between the digital product passport and there but you're working with us with some very large customers in that space and that's super exciting.
And you know, I've worked with some of your colleagues here on solutions mainly in the Japanese market with a whole range of different early customers in the retail and the just space and then there's some other really interesting R&D stuff which we won't talk about because it's super secret but it's pretty cool.
So that's kind of the I don't know if there's anything you want to add or correct in that but that's the that's the I don't know whether there's an advert but for anyone that's interested in will you and Sata that's how we come together but we're not really going to delve into that for the rest of the call unless there's anything you want to add.
And that's correct. We have a team who is really working on the idiot 100% of their time. We are demonstrating with your technologies in our show room here in Tokyo so we have a nice show show room where we have a booth where we got and subtle integrated solutions artist. So let's move on to healthcare which is your main focus and Kevin what's your role in the health care business so I'm the vice president of Sato L scale and I'm also in charge of Sato healthcare overseas is less unit.
Okay so what's the difference between those two things so Sato L scale is a company working autonomously inside Sato within Sato holdings so we belong 100% to Sato holdings. But we have our own PNL we are born strategy and we are basically have more freedom we are roughly 74 employees. Yeah. There are roughly 6566 people taking care of the Japanese domestic market okay which is roughly for us.
One we are 105 million USD in terms of revenue for healthcare and there's a team of little bit less than 10 people doing overseas so I'm the head of this team overseas in healthcare we make roughly 30 million USD. Okay and we really started doing overseas healthcare seriously I would say 6 to 8 years ago before it was something we would be living to the Sato local subsidiaries now we try to we try to drive we try to coordinate global strategy from Tokyo.
And so can you describe the product offering that specific to healthcare and does it overlap with you know the the products that your colleagues in the main part of the business are developing. Sure. So in a nutshell in healthcare right now as of 2024 70% of the solutions we are pushing are a refugee based.
It can be you HF it can be HF can be using NFC we do use a lot of NFC I would say much more than the other verticals of Sato much more than in food much more than in retail or manufacturing and the reason for doing that is because I believe we have some unique value in very specific segments niche niches of the market.
And I would like to use air of the technologies to push even stronger into specific segments to become number one so what do we sell obviously we have printers we have tags we have labels when it comes to hospitals as I said we have patient ID response which are I would say quite a big big piece of our business if you look at it globally.
But we also sell a lot of consulting services we do a lot of pre sales we do a lot of we do more software and that something which is different compared to the to the standard Sato and the reason I can explain later is we have acquired one company called Magida technology in 2013 which has invented a technology called PGM RFID and this company had software.
Okay for very specific segments of the market so we ended up setting their software which is not Sato software and we keep on developing and improving the software over the years. Very interesting so you are you are modest sized team focused on healthcare but you are leveraging a much larger team you know a big portion of that 5,000 of people who were creating these you know a big portfolio products and tags.
But you are basically adding some healthcare specifics and and also acting as a channel for that I guess that main product into healthcare is that fair to say. Yes that's correct so we are both a product management team a strategic team but also a cure count team so it means we we are working on some mid term strategy right now we just finished our mid term strategy.
So until for the period starting in 2024 and 2028 and now we are deploying this mid term strategy over what we call the group member companies the Sato subsidiaries on site so in Europe in the States in Asia in Oceania so we are not alone we have 10 people here in Tokyo but in each country normally we have at least one person doing healthcare.
So belonging to the local Sato so instead of friends we may have one person in charge of healthcare in the US we may have two persons in Singapore we may have three so we do have local contacts look at relays and actually we need those guys to be able to execute the strategy.
So we work hand in hand you know we work on the strategy here we work on the weapons on the product solutions we need and then we work with our colleagues on site to actually execute and find the right business partners to build the ecosystem we need region per region.
It's just a great topic I think you know healthcare is obviously a massive market for all sorts of things but for IoT auto ID RF ID I think it's a really lucrative market so I think there's a lot we can learn from just observing what what you're doing and how you're doing it what are some of the biggest drivers of your business what are some of the biggest opportunities problems use cases that
are exciting here. Yeah so we have chosen to focus our strengths to put strengths and efforts in three specific segments.
The first one is medical device so the track and trace traceability of medical device maybe you are aware of some sync or the medical device regulation connect it with the UDI unique device and the fire where you need to apply a serialized GT on every single medical device to ensure full track and trace so if something happens during a surgery with some implant you need to be able to tell who when and where that implant was produced.
What country is this in place? It's already on it's already on in the States it's it's on in Europe for medical device class three it's in China it's in Singapore in most of countries in the world it's it's on already. It depends based on the class of the medical device when it comes to class three which is the most advanced typically would be implantable devices when you have a knee when you have a hip surgery.
The stuff which the certain would put inside your body this is highly regulated when it comes to class two or one depending on the country it's not on yet. So we try to basically use the regulation and provide something our customer need to be compliant with the MDR with the medical device regulation with UDI while allowing our customer to save time and money and we do that very often using RFID so we have a lot of RFID solutions for the medical device traceability.
And what are examples of class one and class two devices. One can be something like surgery sponge you know like a sponge that you would use a surgery to absorb the blood of a patient. Something as simple as that. It really depends many exact normal diseases regulated by the FDA in the States by the European Commission in Europe.
You do have a equivalence also if you go to China if you go to India you also have local equivalence. I guess the most important thing is when it comes to medical device everything you do everything you put on the label everything you own code onto the type memory needs to insert some specific rules. And customers are often do not know so you know let's say that if they need to encode a full serialized global trade item number they need quite a big memory.
And sometimes I don't know that you know so that's asking us okay should I should I do a full encoding using the user memory do I need a lot of bits to do the encoding could I just use you know the UID the T idea of the tag and do a lock up. Pretty the rest of the data in some online cloud database so we have a lot of those in crisis and set up very interesting so I have a GS one serial GT in this digital passport number which is allocated to each of these.
And then you can have that use that as a look up what are the cloud systems that you typically. So when you store the more detailed information the historic information presumably you know you want to know when the thing was manufactured and how I got to where it got to where's that stored.
So it really depends on each business case you know when it comes to so when you have a project with a medical device vendor normally everything is stored at the ERP of our customer so let's say we have a big project with a medical device in plants vendor.
Big names out there using our solutions that we just choose to encode the minimum on the tag you know are sometimes not even encoding anything you know could be just using as I said as UID and then do a look up and then they would put all the product product code a lot number.
Expression dates on to the cloud and which would be which would be the ERP we also have the possibility to facilitate this so we have our own middleware so being able to let's say control all the flows of data coming from our readers and export them in a clean way to the ERP of the customer so we just give them the data that need to see. In a format that the ERP so get the Edwards or SAP will be able to understand.
So you know I would call what you just describe the serialization platform is that how you would describe it yes that's we are what we're seeing it can. So yeah I think that's that's very interesting to. Here about and then I was going to ask you so who are the main ERP systems that you find being used in the health camera.
So normally there are three when it comes to medical device you have a jet the Edwards or echo that's number one SAP S for Hannah SAP and the last one will be Microsoft dynamics. Those are the three I've seen my career I would say 90% of the time when you have a new project especially in Europe or even in the state and it's going to be the J.D. or SAP.
So we started to gain like experience you know interfacing with use with use ERP's and you know it depends if it's yeah if it's SAP or J.D. we are normally able to interface in house. So we have a team in Australia which is able to interface with those standard ERPs in two three weeks.
Okay it's totally possible if it's something a little bit more exotic we may ask local system integrator to work with us and to work on this integration part to what degree are these ERP systems designed to support the serialization of inventory and do they have all the data structures there naturally or not. So when it comes to serialization yes it's down it's in already what I don't have is RFID so the ability to to import a batch of serialized item codes in a very quick way.
There's no native support for RFID in J.D.E. in SAP or in Microsoft Dynamics so we have a few ways of doing it you know if you don't want to spend money you can use a keyboard wedge application and you would just be able to to convert those RFID data into into a language that you know like if you are sending a barcode except you are sending maybe dozens of barcodes at the same time.
But the most efficient way of doing it is to add a layer as I said to convert the information to your Pneed in a language they can understand because yeah as I said if you try to ask I mean very often we have customers asking us okay I need I want to do stock taking stock taking I'm using SAP as for HANA am I able to connect to as for HANA sending RFID data can even if it's a new HF for HF.
Not yet so not able to do it and is the IP vendor is not able to offer it easier or maybe the would put cost millions so not many we offer middleware. Another way is to use dedicated software also we are partnering also with other companies like chain lane. We know who are so specializing this kind of stock taking is out of their own software and they also have expertise interfacing with the IP's other BDMS so it's another way of doing it.
And so you highlighted this as you know the first of the one of the main use cases where are we in the evolution of adoption of this so there's regulation and it sounds like you're selling kind of a bond beyond compliance. Yes you can apply but then whilst you're doing it then here's all the other business benefits as everyone got to roll this out is everyone tick complied ready or is this just the beginning.
Everybody normally should be compliant now with the MVR and UDI in the States and in Europe. A clock is really kicking so if that's not compliant that should really hurry what we are trying to do is to tell them okay you need to be compliant but in some specific parts of your business. There could be some improvement in your work flow in terms of time and cost settings. Why don't you use this opportunity of the MVR and the device regulation to move to RFID.
And you know there are some very specific parts of their work flow processes where RFID can shine so we try to identify as you know as I call them touch points and to provide RFID not for the whole supply chain sometimes it does not make sense but from very specific parts like in the reverse logistics you know in this medical device world for the implants. It's a reverse logistics means they are shipping implants from the warehouse to hospitals for surgery.
The surgeon to be getting would use maybe 20 25% of the implants is receiving from the vendor. Why? Because the vendor is almost sending multiple sizes you know let's say you have a ship surgery on the left side. The vendor would send three different sizes small medium large he would send both the left and the right side just in case you know so you have this kind of big kit coming to the hospital.
The surgeon would just use maybe 20% of the implants coming and the rest would be shipped back to the warehouse. So many in the warehouse when the kids is when the when the long kids is coming back they will need to scan those items and they would invoice what is missing what has been consumed. And to do that they used to do this with barcode you know scanning one implant at a time one by one.
Now as you can imagine with verified it and else they just push the tab through the tab and then five or six seconds. So you know in terms of time savings it's quite fascinating you move from a 40 minutes intensive scanning process to one minute process automatic scanning with automation. That's just one example. And what does one of those tunnels look like?
So we can do it both you know it depends on the items you are scanning it depends where you do the tagging we have customers tagging at source before sterilization. Okay. Meaning they would apply the tag before the implants is sterilized is sterilized using gamma rays or ebeam. And in that case we use we have a technology we call PGM or a 5D which is sterilization hardened so it would be HF.
If the tag after the sterilization in the warehouse in the distribution center you don't need to be sterilization hardened you can just use UHF. Okay so depending on the tagging scenario you would use different tags and different tunnels. Okay. And so how big is the tunnel? A standard tunnel for orthopedic implant lung kit is 64 centimeters by 64 centimeters.
Okay. So it can be integrated on the conveyor belt is just like you know I think it's around one meter long and as I said 64 by 64 in terms of the weeds and and hate. And then how much do they cost if I want to buy one of these tunnels? If we talk about UHF tunnel it's normally between yeah between 10 and 20 gay, 10 and 20,000 euro USD. If it's PGM it's a little bit more advanced in terms of technology it's between 30 and 40,000 euros.
Okay. And so that tells us a little bit about what the benefits must be to offset that. So it's significant, it's basically it's the value of the time and presumably better accuracy as well. You're just going to get more compliance with one of these tools. That's correct. Better accuracy and again it comes with the technology with UHF you know there's a claim. It's always 99.9, 99.8 which is really true. When you look at it in practice you can you barely achieve 100%.
With the tech we have is PGM RFID we guarantee 100%. So meaning you can really reliably with a full piece of mines can in items you know you're going to reach 100%. It's not only about accuracy it's also about stock rotation. The faster you do it the faster the pits you have received will be able to be shipped back again to Rospitums. Meaning the stock you have does not sleep on the shelves as soon as it is returned to the warehouse you can be shipped back again to the customer.
So this is now this is how not many are customers safe man. So how do you quantify the economics? So that's there's a there's a personnel. There's the velocity of the supply chain which translates to lower capital requirements in the supply chain. It sounds like it could get pretty complex. Do you how active are you in helping your prospective customers figure out the ROI? Yes so not many what we would do before doing anything we would do we would go on site.
You know this in at subtle in in Japanese we say again value cool. It means literally the power to be on site in Japanese and it's something we are told. As soon as you enter the company you get you need to be on site don't stand your face you need to be in the warehouse you need to be at your customer. So this is kind of a lesson I heard from my early days in subtle. So before any project with you will see a pilot which is quite standard in the industry right.
This pilot can be between one month to three months even sometimes six months you know we just give the time to the customer he needs to understand. Where are the touch points where he can save money where he cannot. And then we decide together where our fight can really shine can bring benefits both in terms of accuracy. But also for later in the process where it can help them to do faster reconciliation faster stock rotation higher customers satisfaction and so on.
So as you said it's about allocating resources you know so maybe before our fight is at three guys. Also that had night shift with the handy scanner doing the scanning of the items with the tunnel you just need one maximum. Sometimes if you have a conveyor belt pushing the tabs you don't need anyone can be done in an automatic way. And same in the hospitals you know if the hospitals has the same technology it means that when you are shipping out the kit to hospitals.
The vendor would send some advanced shipping notice to the hospital hospital we know what to expect. And if the hospital again has RFID and it does not have to be a tunnel could be a handy reader. We just could do just with the inbound and the receiving of the kit in just a few seconds. And then it would avoid having any discrepancies or any claims. Yeah you said you know I made a booking supposed to be 50 items that just had 48. What happened to those two items you know it very often happens.
And with RFID is this is basically when you have RFID at both points of the chain. This kind of issues a challenge is basically this appears. So you have kind of automated shipping automated receiving and you can spot the discrepancies very quickly. How is the data transmitted between the shipper and the receiver the distributor and the vendor and the hospital. Is it generally using EDI or what is the mechanism.
It's something even easier so what we have in Australia is we have so we offer solutions for both the vendor and to the hospital. So we have a solution for the further vendor in the warehouse. So it's like a WMS. It's like a RFID and hence WMS that we use for booking of the long kits. And we have something very similar for hospitals to be able to receive the kits and send them back to the hospitals. Those both softwares are connected.
Meaning every time you so let's say if the vendor is shipping something with all software from the warehouse. At the other side of the chain. The hospital would get some as I said advanced shipping not just. It can be done by email can be done using the very by cloud can be HTTP cost. It does not matter. But you would get this advanced shipping notice and then automatically once you receive the kits some confirmation would be sent to the vendor. So it's a loop.
There's no there's no leak of information basically. But these are two different companies to they both have to use your software because you know one maybe the distributor has their own warehouse management system. So how does that that work? So you're basically providing the glue between the shipper and the receiver. And they're happy with that. They don't want to use their own EPCIS or EDI or whatever.
So you know the software providing can basically work hand in hand with the customer with the vendor WMS. So you don't need to replace their WMS by satos to be able to use RFID. If they want it can really work on in the background just pushing data to the WMS. If you want again if you want to have that loop indeed the hospital needs to use a subtle software. If they don't use a subtle software we are still able to send this kind of advanced shipping notice by email.
It's totally possible but it wouldn't be the same. What we are being requested also right now as you said is since each hospital has a different hospital information system it would take ages to make sure each hospital system is RFID ready. So we are being asked to use this keyboard wedge system I mentioned ago. So the ID is they would just use their existing workflow. And they would do like if they are receiving our shipping items with just a barcode with an SGT.
Okay. That's the GS1 code right. Yes, except they would just be using RFID but this keyboard wedge would be converting the RFID information into the proper format. The hospital is a software at the hospital understands. So if they do that we just need to install like a small middleware even a script on our readers. And then the software on their end can basically understand RFID.
So it's not a solution allowing you to unleash the full benefits of RFID but it's allowing you to be able to understand codes in a batch format. So it's not a one by one. You can just put a whole box containing containing codes. Item codes and this would be uploaded onto the hospital system. And the hospital system you mentioned HIS hospital information system is that the same as the ERP system or is this a different variety of software package?
No, it's a different variety of software. You do have many in the hospitals that's one of the challenges we have. You know, when it comes to resbands, you have patient and missusions system. When it comes to X-ray, radio, you have the packs. It's all of the software normally used the H-HL7 protocol to be interconnected in the hospital. So if it's happening in the hospital, it's okay. If it's a third party doing business with the hospital, it's a different story.
So right now as of today, there's no interconnection between like the, let's say hospital with be getting implants, you know. There's no connection between the, at least no electronic connection between the S-G-T number on the implants to the patient electronic medical record. This needs to be associated locally by the hospital. So when we take at Sato, orthopedic implants for those vendors, we just put information related to the implant itself.
There's no, yeah, there's no interconnection to the patient, many down the record. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what big wireless does. They charge you a lot, we charge you a little. So naturally, when they announce they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you. That's right, we're cutting the price of Mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month.
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Typically what are those who are the main vendors for those systems? It depends. If it's a really big company, they may be using actually they may have a module in the ERP. So they may be using SAP or JD in the warehouse. They may have also local WMS or local warehouse management system if it's a small company. So it's really a case by case case by case topic. There's no one single model fits it all. It needs to be it needs to be defined as a scope. Demons are by not during the PUC.
Well, I mean, even for our conversation, I've already see why you need a dedicated healthcare business unit within a company like Charter. There's a lot of legislative customs software, very specific use cases, ROI. So that's I can see why you have the job you have in it. This seems like there's a lot that you have to do. What are the other major use cases that are driving your business? We've really focused on this, you know, the tracking and tracing of devices.
But you mentioned people, the wristbands is that big as well? Yes, so we have two other segments on top of any device. The first one is blood, blood components, traceability. And the third one is people indeed. And by people, I mean patient, Chris Ben and patient, simple and specimen. So yeah, I mean, starting with blood, blood is kind of a niche market. Arrophity is barely used by any blood centers worldwide, by any blood banks.
You just have a hand, really, just have a few global players, able to offer traceability for blood components worldwide. Satou is one of those. You know, the trick is in with blood is obviously it's liquids. So you cannot use a good old UHF. That's why we have, you know, we use this article called PGM RFID, working very nicely around liquids. And this is the high frequency, as opposed to the old time. Yes, that's perfect. Yeah. Okay, so that kind of propagates better in those environments?
That's correct, yes. Okay. It's also actually the standout, which is recommended by the ICCBBA. The ICCBBA is like GS1 when it comes to blood. It's emitting standouts and giving recommendations, guidelines on the whole blood should be traced. And, you know, why is it that it's such a niche market, then? Is it just because it's technically very difficult or is it adoption fundamentally just very low?
I guess, you know, so far, there was not nobody satisfying solutions, but RFID solutions offered to blood centers. Meaning, you know, they were all restored. Okay, RFID is working, but you have this guy, you have guideline A, B, C, D, E. You need to do it in a specific way, otherwise it won't work. Liquid, when you have pockets of blood stacked, you know, tags facing each other. I think you can understand very quickly.
It's kind of a very tricky environment, low temperature, frozen plasma being kept at minus 30, minus 35. And challenging topics for RFID, right? We are just starting actually, we had our first success in the blood with RFID with HS four years ago. 2020, kind of a new story for us. But now we are seeing some good momentum. We have more and more blood centers and blood banks in the hospital asking us, okay, have this inventory of blood components have a lot of wastage.
You know, if you keep a blood unit out of the three, four, more than 20 units, you need to trash it, right? At least you are supposed to, which is quite some money. And obviously, if you talk about plasma, platelets, it's even more expensive. It's a very scarce resource. So you need to make sure you don't waste it. And because of this wastage topic, more and more companies are thinking, okay, okay, how can I make my inventory smarter?
Or can I avoid sending people in my cold rooms, counting one blood unit, one by one? Can I have smart shelves? Can I do batch reading when I sheep a blood, when I receive blood? Can I have smart freezers? Can I have smart agitators for platelets? Also, still big salary coming more and more. Very interesting. And so lastly, the tracking of patients, there's got to be some sensitivity to that right, to privacy and all that. Yes, that's a question we are often asked.
So, you know, when it comes to RFID in the risk-bending world, I think the shares right now that the technology are very low, are we just going to make maybe less than 5% of risk-bends projects worldwide are using RFID, 95 using UHF, maybe 5% with HF. I suppose one of the reason is, you know, again, it all comes to be quiz right, a human body is made of liquids of blood. So just putting a standard risk-bending with the UHF inlay is not going to cut it. You need to have something special.
You're going to have a flag, so you need to keep some distance between the UHF inlay and the skin and the body of the patient. All you need to have a specific shielding material to create again some kind of, yeah, kind of a barrier between the beginning of skin and the inlay. Ten years ago, it was quite tricky to do that at an acceptable price. Like in the blood world, we are seeing more and more solutions able to get a job down for our low cost.
When it comes to the privacy of patients, it vastly depends on the market. If you're talking about Europe, yes. Europe is a very sensitive market when it comes to patient information. Let's say when you have a project, the IT team of the hospital is involved. So procurement team, and often the company has a compliance team, we're also making sure that if the risk band is going to be cut, it's going to be picked by someone, is there any chance that the patient information could be leaked?
Now, very often, as you can imagine, people just encode the minimum onto the patient risk band. They are mostly using it as a beacon just to be able to track and trace the patient location in the hospital. This is where it shines with UHF, with a high-ranked rehab, two to three meters. You are able to see where the patients are standing in the hospital near real time. And then since you see the location, you can basically allocate resources in real time.
So let's say I have 10 patients in this waiting room. I can see that maybe I need to send one more nurse to attend those patients in the waiting room. But let's say, okay, I mean the restroom now, I just had surgery, you can see on your screen that I'm starting to walk around. Or maybe I'm not moving at all. Maybe something is happening, right? You send someone to the room to check.
So more and more hospitals are not using UHF, RF, or even just to scan, but to do flow management, patients flow management to optimize their resources and allocate their personal resources in real time. This is how the use RFID experiments more and more. And the, so what kind of readers are able to do that kind of tracking? This is not a handheld reader we're talking about. No, I mean, so it depends. It depends on the use case.
Let's say, if you have babies in the maternity's incubators, okay, then you need to spend maybe three weeks in the incubators. You may use those on the nurse, may have a handy RFID reader. And just go inside and wave it around and capture all the babies' IDs. Just a few seconds. That's quite common, right? That being said, now what we do is replace RFID UHF readers antenna at strategic locations through the world. It can be on top of the door.
You know, to monitor what's in, what's out in real time on top of the door can be in the, as I said, in the restroom. It can be at the entrance of the surgery world. And that normally is done with the hospital and with the system integrator. And to answer your questions, you know, we are diagnostics. So we work with any vendors on the market. We did a lot of projects with imping, but it could be with any other vendor. You know, it does not teach. We know it's just within standard UHF protocol.
So the brand you are using does not really matter. And what are that we talked about the markets where there's a lot of sensitivity. But what are the market markets where this is taking off where presumably there's less sensitivity to the privacy issue? Well, I guess, you know, in Asia, that's maybe there's a little bit less sensitive when it comes to the topics.
So for me, you know, markets like India, like Southeast Asia, where there have a regrowing population are very promising in terms of penetration. We are just starting, but that being said, you know, even in Europe, even in the all-Europe, with the aging population, you know, less and less, less and less nurses, right? You know, how it is less and less nurses, less and less staff able to attend to people who need it.
So, you know, being able to track and trace patients needing care or patients, or maybe a patient from the Geiatric World, from the Psychiatry World in real time, is not a bad idea, especially when you are struggling to get people working for your clinic. So, yeah, I said India and Southeast Asia, but honestly, you know, we have projects also in Europe. We had requests from India, from Southeast Asia, even in Japan, starting to take off.
So, as in for me, if you do it well, and if the price, if you manage to get the price down, even lower in the coming months and years, could just be replacing what we know, what we know have with the barcode Brisbane. Yes. So, what is the sensitivity to privacy in Japan relative to, say, the European Union? So, actually, when it comes to Japan, I was a bit surprised myself, but that was one of the first countries using RFID recipients more than 10 years ago.
We are working with a few universities here, and we had some university professors, doctors, working with us hand in hand. It was HF back in the day, to have the first case study in Japan using a Sato HF Brisbane. And that was, I guess, 12 years ago in a negata university, not in Tokyo, in negata university. So, you know, I guess even in Japan, it's a very pragmatic market. If something is working, they will definitely go for it.
That being said, in Japan, it's a bit different, you know, that the, in most of the world, because the average time a patient is staying in hospital in his less than three to four days. Quite, you know, very quick, you need to get out, right? In Japan, it can be up to one week. It's not unusual to stay one week, meaning since you stay longer, the type of Brisbane you wear is also different.
You have more, I would say, premium products for the Japanese market, just because, you know, issues like skin sensitivity, comfort are more important than price, in some ways. So, in the rest of the world, you know, price, price is very important, it uses a big competition when it comes to wristbands. In Japan, you see only market in the world where price is important, yes, for sure, but the comfort of the patient and the ability to say that, yes.
There's no product, it has been ISO tested for, you know, skin irritation, cytotoxicity, you won't get any issues, saying that is even more important. Interesting. It's fascinating that the level, the length of stay in Japan is longer, and you know, why is that?
Yes, that's a good question. Honestly, I was quite surprised when I came to myself coming from Europe, you know, where we have huge queues in front of the emergency department, in France, in Germany, in the UK, it's happening everywhere, right? It's more and more people are going to the hospitals waiting hours. In Japan, obviously, you do wait, you do wait, you know, it's not instant, but I feel I'm, I've seen many more nurses in the Japanese hospital.
So, I feel I'm being attended, I'm being taken care of, I think they just allocate more money in people. So, you know, you see that everywhere, you're that in hospital, you see that in a restaurant, you see that when you go shopping, you have just more staff, able to serve you, and to give you a service, and it's the same in the hospital.
I think it's just a mindset difference, it's a culture change, something we don't have overseas, and maybe in some countries in Asia, like South Korea, where it's quite similar. But is this the only country in the world where you know, going to hospital in Japan, I feel totally safe. And the reason is, I know there's always a nurse nearby, I'm never left and attended, like I could be in France or in Germany, for more than 30 minutes.
You know, people check on me, asking how I'm doing, actually scanning my wristband, many countries in Europe, I've had wristband without even being scanned a single time. In Japan, it does not happen, you are with men, you are being scanned every hour, at least. So, you know, yeah, mindset difference, I guess. Very impressive. So, I guess we should wrap up soon. I had just a couple of questions in my mind.
One is, what you've described is, there's a lot there. The you and your team have to build. How long has it taken you to get to where you've got to? This is not an overnight thing. You've kind of described an evolution of the market, but I'm assuming there's an evolution within Sato to build everything that you've discussed. Yeah, I suppose when you do healthcare, you are dealing with topics which are not common in the IDC world.
Obviously, myself, I feel it more exciting because in everything we do, there's a patient safety at stake. So, you know, it's not like if you're selling a box of, selling a can of carrots and beans. It's even when you're in the warehouse, you know that if you screw up, I deal with the line, I deal with the chain of the patient.
So, if you screw up on the label for the medical device, if you screw up on the label for the blood bag, for the drug for the pharmaceutical, somebody at the end of the line is going to suffer. So, for me, that's a big motivation. So, even if it takes strong violence, and when you look at a medical device project, the lead time we have can be, you know, between six months to two to three years, same for blood center.
You have many public canters, it can take, it can take years to get where you want to be. So, we really started selling wristbands overseas 20 years ago. We are getting there now, doing more U.S. Chef, maybe doing some Bluetooth in the future, doing some more smart wristbands, you know, for the patients able to monitor the vitals of the patient.
So, this is where I want to go. And you know, in the medical device blood, we just started, as I said, eight, six to eight years ago. And now we are just starting to have finally large accounts trusting us. And you know, those accounts trust is allowing us to do more, to improve what we do, but also to try to do an entapped business, unexplored business, as Sato. So, I find this very exciting. And where is the biggest, what's the thing that excites you most about the future?
I think we're going to have major challenges, you know, as a French guy myself, major challenges in our countries when it comes to the aging population. As I said, being able to provide a remote care, so being able to treat patients at home, nursing, you know, nursing, treat patients at home, while ensuring full trust ability. Meaning, you know, if you guys get, if you get a prescription from medication, our job, I believe, is to make sure that you as a patient is taking your medication.
And this, and the, and this, you give some automatic feedback to the pharmacy, to the hospital. So, we need to ensure a proper bi-directional communication between the patient and the care provider. So, there's a lot of things to do when it comes to, yeah, remote nursing, remote care. And I believe, you know, AI, DC solutions, Bluetooth, NFC, UHF can really shine, but we need to make it more user friendly.
Right now, it's very much industrial, you know, you need to be in the world, you need to understand, okay, RFID, how does it work? Data coding, how does it work? It's too complicated. Yes. You cannot ask a 65, 70 years patient to understand. It needs to be plug and play. And I believe this is where we need to make the effort. We need to be easier to use. And only then, we really have something we can benefit to the whole society. It's not the case yet.
When you know, I just, there was one question I was meaning to ask you, I've got to ask you, it doesn't fit neatly, but it's, so obviously I'm interested in beyond RFID, and I was really pleased to hear you talk about Bluetooth, but you said that NFC in particular is finding a place. And you know, I've NFC impairments massive in the United States NFC is an auto ID technology really has never taken off in the United States, more so in Europe.
But what is it that you're seeing in healthcare in with that technology? So we do a lot of hybrid, we do a lot of hybrid tags. The tags, so the HF tags we sell for blood bags and automatic implants also NFC ready. Meaning that in a hospital, if and if you are not equipped with an RFID reader, you'd be able to check on the fly and implant a blood bag with your smartphone.
Most people will know this, but when we say NFC, we mean near-fuel communications, and this is basically taking any smartphone and being able to tap and having that tap experience. And sometimes we look at that as a limitation, oh, I have to tap in order to see the information that's associated with this bottle of champagne.
And you know, in the early days of NFC, there was a lot of, let's put NFC on booze and yeah, I don't know whether that's taken off. It always seemed a bit of a stretch to me. But there are times when you want that positive affirmative selection and then the electronic data to be passed to your phone.
So, so this is interesting. So blood bags, I can see that you've got a dense set of items, you maybe do a scan and you can see, oh, I've got 50 blood bags, but what about this particular one? That's where you want the tap experience. I'm assuming. You know, you can even imagine the future is where we like to be is where we like to go is imagine we're just a smartphone. You have a blood bag laying around, okay, it has been on somewhere.
You don't know where it's coming from. You don't know how long it has been out of the fridge. Imagine if you just tap it with your smartphone, you tap it and then you get, okay, I've been out from the fridge for 18 minutes. This is my current temperature. Okay, and you wouldn't use a QR code, you wouldn't use a QR code or a barcode, because it might get iced over or something like that that might presumably that's that would be the obvious alternative. Yes, correct. Pretty good.
Again, if you start to talk about pharmaceuticals, it's about drugs, obviously having NFC, ready product is enough, your benefit as a patient being able to check if it gives them any senior taking is genuine is is counterfeited. So, if you're in some countries, like India, like Southeast Asia, in some countries, being able to do that and making sure that you are taking the right stuff is kind of kind of a nice I believe.
So for all those reasons, I see NFC as a plus. Now for me, it's just a plus, you know, it's something which is coming on top doing NFC for NFC like you obviously are obviously mutations, but when it's coming on top of something we do already providing even more value. Yeah, I guess we would be stupid nothing is it. Very good. And then what does it add to the cost of a tag if you have that type experience?
With the HF tags we're producing doesn't add anything. It's really part of the this it was designed that way with the HF PGM tags we're producing it was designed that way it's lots of things we are we don't have a specific process. It was the cheap was designed that way. Okay, but you so and that's what you meant by dual mode I was thinking you would have you HF where I have the benefit of you know the range of the scanning and I could tap. Are you saying that combination as well?
We are talking about it right now we are not pushing any products. UHF plus NFC. Okay. Yes, I mean we do have some discussions I'm exploring or so but you know. Again, as you said before launching anything I want to make sure we have a business case behind. Yes, it's not about saying yeah, we have this let's sell it is this box moving approach we try to have a business case first having a customer.
I could use the our tags in this application let's do it together then I would go for it right now we don't have anyone asking us for the specific needs of FU HF plus NFC maybe in the future. Well, that was a little bit of a detailed rabbit hole but I want to thank you Kevin for sharing so much information about what you are doing. There's a lot of interesting applications you shared with us some of the business drivers that are impacting health care something we.
Is a part of everyone's life so I guess you're doing something that you know impacts the whole world in a very meaningful way and I think this future where more and more of this health care gets administered in the home is is a really interesting thing so.
Thank you for that so Kevin you're in Tokyo at the moment is that true that's correct yes I'm in Tokyo you're in Satoha Q. I've got to ask you how you got there obviously not how you got to the office although I actually am interested in how you got to the office and what it's like to commute in Japan and.
You know I'm a bit of an expatriate myself in a mixed up kind of way I grew up in England working in the States and I'm constantly every day there's some kind of cultural thing that strikes me as odd or peculiar and I can only imagine for you it's like.
Two three four times as much because the Japanese and the French culture are quite far apart how did you end up working in Japan and why did you decide to do that so starting in 2003 I was a student in France doing my business cool and I had the option to spend once a semester abroad.
All of my mates and friends went to the States I went to the UK and I was the only one choosing to go to Japan so I went to Tokyo University for four months I really liked it and I wanted to I just wanted to be back so after I graduated from my school I started my career in Paris as a software product manager for two years and half and then I just has your opportunity to fly to Japan again.
But this time to work not to be a student anymore so I started as a business consultant for French small and medium sized companies willing to invest in Japan I used to be based in Yokohama for. From four years and a half and then I was basically.
I was at that time you know there are two setters in Japan that one set to auto ID and one set to inform us it goes and most of Japanese people know the pharmaceuticals subtle because it's a big elephant always appearing on TV but it was not that subtle it was the other one right so I tried I really liked it and that's how I ended up working in Tokyo so back in from 2010 so it's been my nights my 15s.
Yeah in the company so what was it that appealed to you about Japanese culture and being in Japan so much well obviously I could tell you the I could use a serious answer saying it was a culture and he was a history but no he was actually the manga and the other games when I was young right now I was 16 17 really OK yeah that being said when I was really here when I took some time to explore the country
to meet people I you know I just discovered a culture which was the opposite of the one I was used to in France as you said so it was kind of a culture shock but I also found a place where I could you know be myself and I could bring some value and I believe you know this country needs to have people acting as a breach between Japan she's you know like you know this kind of a guy that goes culture in this country because
in it's an island and it's not that easy to fly from Japan to another country right in France even is UK you know you take the Eurostar you're in Paris one hour it's not for the case here so far as far as I see a real value to help and contribute to the Japanese society by working in a Japanese company that makes sense I mean I've come from England where I grew up to America but I my kind of utility as a translator
is somewhat limited we grew up you know English people are kind of experts in America you could argue that Americans aren't experts in English people but but it makes sense how you would bridge that gap so what's it like living and working in Tokyo do you live in Tokyo or because it's an incredible it's an incredible city
you're almost pretty incredible city as well on the sea and your own eyes both for a bit honestly if I could choose I would rather live in Yokohama because it's as you said is this near the sea it just say you know less people Tokyo is very busy busy city it's it starts as you know with the commuting hours early morning can be kind of a nightmare it was today we have had heavy rains today in Japan so the trade the trade we are packed running late
and today have the guys with the white gloves pushing you in the train still is that thing not in the stations but you have at least four six attendants on each platform ready to push should you take too much time to get on board so you need to be you need to be where you are for
to be there and then quickly hop on to the train that's amazing and how long did it take you to become fluent in Japanese I wouldn't sell you know you can always improve right but let's say to reach a comfortable business level it took me about five years I used to go to the Japanese school every morning when I started here my business concert and career in 2006 so between 2006 2010 I was studying nearly every day and then my chance
oh I don't need to have a chance but my bus did not speak in English so if I wanted to make my voice heard in the company I needed to use Japanese and I guess you know when you report in Japanese every day when you are meeting the game and again
you just need to you just have to do it right otherwise you cannot survive so yeah fall to five years to to become for the balin settle and you've been there 15 years do you still find to what degree is there a gap between you and the rest of the people in sort of
native speakers well it's about in company meetings it's totally fine we are on the same level when we meet a local customer let's say we meet a customer from consai area which is from Osaka or Kobe you they use a different dialect I may miss a few words or I may not be able to get some nuance they have in specific
sentences as I'm I could even to explain to me now actually she meant that so even if he said yes it was no so sometimes I need to ask my colleagues to make sure I really understand when it's out of Tokyo and so there's more than just an accent then there's
actually a different vocabulary yes they do they do use a few different words so it depends on people you have many people who are born into you and you're working also can now but yes sometimes you some kind of dialect so we shall not use to it it can be a bit surprising
well amazing I feel like I could talk to you all day about this it's I've always been fascinated by Japan I first time I went was on my dime I you my wife and I we one of the first things we did as a couple was we kind of turned around the country and it was awesome but expensive so so let's go to the the regular warm up questions I feel like I've already got to know you a bit but let's talk about what three songs or what's the first
of your three songs that are memorable to you and why okay so the first one was easy my fabric band is from the UK it's an old band called electric light orchestra oh I'm sure you know that one oh yeah my guy could I could this I've got a pizza frampton by me but it could easily have been out of the blue electric light light or orchestra so yeah since you're seeing out of the blue my favorite song is Mr. Blue Sky from Halo yeah what can I say obviously I'm too young to have known that
band when they were at the top so I my dad was a huge fan of a lot she saw them in concert multiple times in France and she used to listen to them you know really very very loud when I was when I was eight or ten so I have this memories of you know French Samelles field with yellow songs from morning to the evening so I guess it was only natural
that I would like the band so yeah that's one of my favorite bands and Mr. Blue Sky is a very yeah it's a lovely song it's I like the beat I like the lyrics my you know I like the melody with Jeff Lene it's obviously always nice so yeah one of my favorite songs of all times definitely that's beautiful yeah great that has those family associations and actually it does for me as well I I grew up in England and I had a
close relationship with my grandmother she was born at the turn of the century so 1900 and I used to go around and I ended up redecorating her kitchen building cabinets putting them up and she rewarded me with doughnuts and some money to buy a record and I bought yellow out of the blue so so you two for one my memory and you're memory what's number two what's your second song
number two is from the US it's it's quite kind of all these as well because I'm going to give you the beach boys and I've picked good vibrations which is according to me one of the best songs ever written Brian Wilson genius yes good vibrations is something which I had never heard before so yes against the lyrics harmony
the way all the beach boys voices I know the joining together and raising again and again it's something I had never heard before and it was used in the 80s in many commercials across Europe and France so this is all new the song I think it was yeah it was used for some commercial for some Christ Lerker so I kept hearing it again and again and I asked my dad and obviously she knew it and she had all the CDs
all the records of the beach boys and so this is how I found out about them and I saw them in concert in Paris in 1995 or 96 when I was 15 or 16 I believe yeah amazing well I this is supposed to be about you but not about me but I always find this so fun when there's an affinity so I saw them during COVID
not the full band obviously they've somewhat diminished Brian Wilson wasn't part of it but it was still an amate I mean I remember dancing everyone basically listening from their cars because it was a car concert and that was so cool but the thing that really struck me was how much this kind of competition and respect between them and the Beatles and how Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney and John Lennon
they were aware of each other and they were competing and you know pet sounds which I think would vibration is on pet sounds was kind of like that and Sargent Pepper were in competition so yes so cool I love your taste of music I can't wait to hear one number three is what what is it so number three I had to pick one French artist right and I chose Charles Asnabour
it's a song he wrote in the 70s called she so it was written in English it was reused many times it was sung by Elvis Costello maybe you remember in the movie Notting Hill it was I think the ending song for the credits and the reason I chose it is because I use that song for my wedding so it does kind of you know personal connection to my own life and I just find again it's a beautiful song it's beautifully sung by Charles Asnabour yeah what can I say it's again of lovely song
and the Elvis Costello version is great as well he's an amazing artist yeah that was I have to say I the ELO and the she I remember that being in the top of the British charts when it comes to the music I was a kid at the time but very good well Kevin I really enjoyed that thank you so much for sharing a bit about your career and your musical memories and for coming on the show thanks a lot
thank you thank you so much so that's it another episode I hope you enjoyed the interview with Kevin I cannot restrain myself when there's a connection between the music that I guess love and my own musical taste but you know the best thing about this show from my perspective is just being able to be schooled in an industry by someone that's living it
and this information is tremendously useful for any of us that are in the business development world or just talking to customers and wanting to get smarter about either their business or their technology so I hope you enjoyed as much as I do again 200 episode thank you very much for listening and until next time be safe bye