Data, Devices & the Future of Healthcare: Insights from Garmin Health at HLTH 2024

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This is the No Normal Show brought to you by BPD. This is where we leave all things status quo, old school, traditional, and boring in the dust. And instead we celebrate the new, the innovative, the powerful, the future, all related to how brands can lead the way in health. I’m your host today, Stephanie Rearwell, EVP of engagement here at BPD. And I am so excited to bring you this very special episode.

We had a team on the ground at Health 2024, HLTH, the conference in Las Vegas that happened in mid, actually late October. It was last week. So we all just got back. We hit the ground back from Vegas and were reflecting over our experience. And what we did was we were having conversations with all kinds of healthcare leaders across the entire healthcare ecosystem. So that includes health tech organizations,

providers, startups, nonprofits, anyone and everyone who is innovating in healthcare. And today I’m bringing you two conversations that we had. First of all, we’ll chat with Andy Beckman, Director of Sales and Marketing at Garmin Health. And we sat down with him and talked about the Garmin Health ecosystem, which is not just devices. It includes all kinds of interesting innovations they do across a variety of industries. And then I’ll come back and summarize some of the things that I learned.

I am so excited to have a conversation today with Andy Beckman, Director of Sales at Garmin Health America. Hi Andy. Hello. Yeah. Thanks a bunch for having me. Thank you for joining. How are you doing here on day four of Health? I guess better than expected. I unfortunately probably missed that on the opportunity of a lifetime with bust to rhymes last night. I chose sleepover. I got in early two days ago, three days ago, three days ago. So still catch up a little bit from that.

chose health over Busta, so sorry, Busta. Wow, good decision, I think. I chose Busta over health and I’m regretting it today. have the rest of the week to recover. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. So speaking of health, I want to hear a lot more about what you do in your role as director of sales at Garmin Health. Yeah, thanks. So Garmin Health, we like to think of ourselves as kind of a scrappy startup inside Big Garmin. We roll up into the Garmin fitness segment.

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And really our whole goal is to find partners that want to take the data from our wearables to do interesting things. So much like you’re seeing with other types of data sets that are coming here in the industry, but you know, so we, can manifest in a few different ways from corporate wellness to employee benefits to insurance from like dynamic underwriting and whatnot there.

We do a ton with research and clinical trials. do a lot with remote patient honoring, chronic condition management. We also work a lot with the military in a few different ways. And then we also do gym and fitness applications as well. So helping trainers and coaches train their end users much better than they could if they just randomly look at them, I guess. So out of all that data is really powerful.

We believe that Garmin has a lot to offer the industry from a long battery life on their wearable. So anytime that you pull the wearable or shut that data set off because you have to take it off to charge it, you really cut into the data stream and you really just don’t have a consistent length of data. Most of the Garmin wearables today can get a minimum of at least five days in a row before you have to charge it. And that includes doing like a one hour activity.

Throughout the, you every day, so that’s pretty powerful. We offer different data streams from our biosensing sensor from heart rate to pull socks to stress to sleep to respiration. You know, so, and we’re constantly innovating on new items. We’re headquartered in Kansas City and most people didn’t realize that.

And we just celebrated our 35th birthday or anniversary, however you want to consider that. happy birthday, happy anniversary. Thank you. you. like the party. Yes. Well, as should be, because it sounds like there’s just so much that you all are doing and accomplishing that hits every industry out there and every person and population out there, which is really incredible. And I love that you say it’s all built on and based on data, which obviously data, health data is the word of the week here, but also the decade more broadly. Right. So.

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having all of that data that you’re sort of sitting on that able to activate and make all of these incredible changes and innovations is incredible. Yeah, now we’ve been very fortunate, know, Garmin, you know, small conservative company. We’re just a small billion dollar company out in the middle of America, a reply over state. you know, it’s really started with our founders 35 years ago.

They had a strong vision for GPS as the government was getting ready to allow public use of the GPS of the satellites that taxpayers paid for. And their whole goal was how can we use innovation to drive that. And that’s just kind of been at the heartbeat of Garmin over the last, 1989. So most of the products that are built at Garmin are

You know, we like to say we help to fuel people’s passions. so most of the people that work on the different products are also whatever they do. So if, if I’m a runner, I’ve probably worked on our forerunner product, which is a wearable that we have, that’s built purpose built for runners. you know, same thing for our aviation. you know, most of our people that work on our aviation products are pilots. So, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a driven nature to how do I make the best product that

I would want which in turn hopefully is a success for the rest of the market as well. Okay well I want to talk to you about the future of healthcare a little bit but before we get into that, ask some questions about what you just said actually because you’re talking of I think you said fuel people’s passions? Yeah. Yeah well what a beautiful what a beautiful line and story and when you when you get in when you just got into the runners and the aviation I mean to me that’s a whole

audience segmentation strategy, right? It’s saying who are all the people that we can touch? What are their passions? And now let’s bring this larger story into all of those various audiences. I think that’s really inspiring from a marketing and sales standpoint, at least. For sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean, know, anytime, you know, the power is in the niche, I guess is what we like to think about. Right. So, if you find a category of people that you can make a positive change for,

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It makes marketing job that much easier, but it also helps to define your product a lot easier. So instead of being a Jack of all things, you can really focus down and make that experience wonderful for, you know, for the actual individual and users. 100%. We always say if you try to be everything to everyone, you’ll be nothing to no one. So, know, when you’re speaking to the niche.

The runners and the aviation folks or whoever it is, golfers. Yeah, golfers. mean, and that’s an interest strategy, right? It’s a passion strategy, which is where people get very emotional. So you can make that emotional connection. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. The amount of, you know, we, and then outside of just the data and that, we also have a, a satellite safety product. So basically we call it inReach and it’s an SOS product. So if you carry this device, you go off backpacking, hiking.

something bad happens, you don’t need to be doing that. Just basically wherever you don’t have cell phone coverage, you can actually hit this SOS button and the amount of stories that have come out of that, it connects you to Garmin Emergency Response Center and then we contact the local authorities to go out and save you. not only will we help you do your passions, but we also help you make you more comfortable in case something bad were to happen while you’re doing it. Yeah, so Garmin is there for you whenever you need it, wherever you are.

So that actually my transition is into the Copernican consumer, which we’ve discussed a little bit together. And our listeners are very familiar with this prediction, but it’s all the idea that in the future, the health universe will be built around consumers and they’ll be at the center of it enabled by sensors, AI wearables, devices, data. It’s all kind of swimming around them, if you will, wherever they are at home, at work, hiking, out in the world, in a plane, in the ocean.

and so that, that that’s powering the entire health universe, if you will, which is a very big shift from what it has been in the past, which is health is in the four walls of a hospital health system or your provider or your doctor’s office, or maybe even a telehealth appointment. but this is a really big shift. So it sounds like this is the kind of thing that you all have been building for some time. Yeah, for sure. you know, I guess maybe back away from healthcare anyway, but as far as just, you know,

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We see such a strong benefit back to the niche of like, who is our customer? How can we help them be successful? And this has really taken these products that we make for running. But there’s so many applications that we can do once we can start pulling in an accurate heart rate sensor that allows for the ability to go talk to other people that find that useful as well.

You may be a runner, but you also are a general health consumer also, right? You you get sick, you get sick, you want to be healthy. You got to, you know, you go through everything that a normal person does, but you’re also a runner. So that customer, customer intersection is there, right? Your population health is still there, even though you are a runner or a golfer or whatever. So, with all that being said, yeah, I think that the consumer or the actual end user is becoming so much more, interested in their own health.

You know, the information age that we’re, we’re in and have been in for a while has been, has led to just a continued, education by the individual end user. And every day it just seems like there’s, you know, somebody new coming out. And I’m just really excited about how, this education piece is also leading to so much different, you know, population change as well. you know, there’s, you know, here at the HLTH show, you know, food is medicine. think that has just been a.

huge missing part and, you have some of the things that, Casey means has been talking about that she spoke here, at, her, and her company and her, her brother Casey, just so exciting to me to, then just having that ability and, being, you know, being on the cusp of where I think there’s going to be a lot of positive changes, not only at the individual level, but also, you know, for groups. So, absolutely. And I love the way that you just talked about that because it seems like there’s really this,

You know, it’s, it’s of course, okay, how do we get into people’s lives in their day to day moments in order to make their health better? How do we get into their lives in their day to day moments in order to ensure that they’re using our products and services all the time, right? And it ties back to that larger ecosystem of data capture and what they’re able to do. And then that ultimately strengthens the business, right? Because of the usage, but also leads back to the larger mission. A lot of the, well, all of the organizations we work with.

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as healthcare organizations, they have the overarching mission to make people healthier. But of course, that has to tie to the business side of it. That has to tie to how are we building it. And the two absolutely can coexist. So I love that you bring up food as medicine, because I think the conversation here has been about nutrition, fitness, sleep, all of the preventive things that we can do that can help people in their day-to-day moments that are ways into healthcare, ways into that.

the product and consumer. Yeah, yeah. mean, it has been fun for me as I as we get Garmin wearables on people in my life. Just the positive changes that have come out of that. And it just it fuels my passion and excitement for what the future could be. I mean, mother in law, yes, Garmin has a metric called body battery. So the thought here is.

Based upon how I sleep at night, my activity through the day, the stress I have either throughout the day or at night. How does that all kind of go together? And then we provide a, a metric or a score, and then we’ll basically tell you how much recharge it. then, know, most consumers realize, I know what a battery is. have one in my cell phone. I change them out of my kids’ video game controllers all the time. And when those are out, you know, you felt bad and you need to recharge. Right. So,

But my mother-in-law, she, she kept saying, well, Andy, why. come my body battery never gets over? think at the time 20, when, know, it’s a scale of zero to a hundred. So every night she’s only recharging a quarter of her, you know, of her recovery, capability. And, so was like, well, more than likely, you probably got a problem going on here. So that led her to go to her, primary care physician. that conversation and he said, you know what?

We should probably check it out. You know, you’re, if you’re sleeping not well, maybe you got a sleep condition. She set in for a sleep study, got diagnosed with sleep apnea, now has a CPAP machine and her body batteries, you know, getting into seventies and eighties, which is very normal now. So it is, you know, just that having that awareness of having that wearable on your wrist and seeing changes in your body. You know, if I worked out and I cut out, you know, if I have more of a whole food diet.

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It’s amazing how that changes my heart rate variability, you know, from a, you know, just overall health. But if I have, you know, say ice cream before bed or whatever, and I can see those negative effects, or if I go to a concert and I have too many free drinks, I can see what that is. I don’t want to point fingers here. but, but you can see, you know, see those changes and then you can make, you know, you can make that personal step to.

Do I want to give up my, my heart rate variability score for the night or my body battery recovery, or do I want to go have some drinks? So, but it’s, it’s, it’s this information. It’s this, think it’s going to just drive the future of population health. I’m really excited to be a part of it. So I love the way you just told that story. And that actually turns this just maybe into our last topic here before we wrap up, which is, you know, you are sales, you’re, you’re director of sales.

You have experience in marketing and sales, and you’re doing B2B marketing and sales every single day. I love the way that you just told such a personal story that shows the power of what Garmin Health is doing and shows the connection to the healthcare system as well and how it is improving people’s health in their real moments. I love the way that you just crystallized that. And I think my question for you is, we all see the sea of sameness, even here at Health, in terms of the B2B world.

Everyone’s trying to show, we have this really innovative product or collection of products and services. And it’s very hard to distill that down to that simple story. what tips or tricks have you learned? What advice do you have to those that are trying to tell a story as powerful as the one that you just shared? Yeah. think, you know, don’t want to chew my own horn, but I think you have to put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re talking with and how can you make it real? Right. You know,

I tell the story all the time. My whole vision for the future is I would love to be able to share my Garmin health data over the last year when I go in for my annual physical. And it will be, you know, summarized in a way that my primary care physician can start to have a real conversation. Cause a hundred percent of the time when I go to the dentist or the doctor, they ask, Hey, you got any problems? Nope. We’re doing good.

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You know, but if I could share that data automatically, or I could PDF it to him and he could see, well, you say you’re doing great, but why is, why is your sleep quality down over the last six months? Or how come you haven’t been moving as much? You know, why is your step, step count lower? Yeah. yeah. So having that ability to tell a real personal thing that everybody deals with is so critical, I think, to, with the connection piece, you know, and, finding common ground.

of a problem that most people have and a solution to fix it. Absolutely. That was just so well said. think, you know, as sales and marketing teams, our jobs are to understand our audiences, be the voice of the audience, but do it in a way that we’re both marrying the data with those empathetic stories. So, you know, I love that everything that you’ve said here today is data-driven, data-led data first, and based on capturing and using all of the

the incredible collection of data that Garmin has, and you and your role, you’re translating that to the human. So thank you for everything you’re doing. Well, it’s big job that somebody’s got to do it. right. That’s right. Well, thank you. We’ll wrap it here. Thank you so much for joining. I really enjoyed our conversation and I enjoyed meeting you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it and really enjoyed it. Well, thank you. Thank you so much to Andy again for having that conversation.

It was a really interesting conversation to learn more about Garmin Health. And I had three key takeaways. And again, would love to hear listeners takeaways as well. But first of all, data, right? Data is the word of the week, as we said, and data certainly tied into the first conversation as well. But it was so fascinating to hear him talk about how data from all of the Garmin Health business units and wearables and devices and services

can tie together and drive overall innovations in healthcare. Again, back to that earlier point of what data do you have that might not be used currently? What data could you link to other data? I think that was a takeaway I had from Garmin Health is it’s not just the data from a wearable, it’s the data from a wearable tied to data that’s needed in aviation or for runners or for all kinds of different parts of their business ecosystem.

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The second takeaway, of course, was about the Copernican consumer. We at BPD really believe that the future is going to be Copernican. It is going to center around the consumer as the center of that health universe. And Garmin is a really outstanding example of a company that’s doing that. It has already built that. And then the third takeaway I had was really specific for marketers. It’s always great to sit down with a marketer and hear what they’re doing and what they’re learning. And we had a great discussion around B2B marketing and sales.

And even on the ground at Health, we were all walking around kind of taking learnings away from what was working and what wasn’t and telling a story about an organization from a B2B standpoint. And I really enjoyed hearing specifically from him because that’s what he does every single day, day in and day out. So I would love to hear your takeaways if you’ve got them. Otherwise, we will wrap up for now and we have a lot more content coming from Health HLTH. So stay tuned, watch your airwaves, your news feeds.

and we’ll come back at you soon. But as always, don’t be satisfied with the normal, push the no normal, push the data, push the storytelling, push your empathy, and we’ll talk to you soon.