True Angle

"They'll just be able to pick it up and use it."

In a recent Mobili-T retraining with a multi-site facility, they told us they initially purchased the system to use with outpatient programs for its portability. "Our other systems were wired so they were harder to use and less portable."

Every clinic has that cabinet full of unused technology. Productivity requirements in the healthcare system means time is a valuable resource so new tech shouldn't take too much time. Ease of use and implementation of biofeedback is exactly what we're going for.

That initial quote is the best compliment we received. We told the clinical manager to invite their inpatient/acute clinicians to the training if they would be using it as well. She felt confident that even if they can't make it, "if the need is there, they'll just be able to pick it up and use it."

No certifications necessary. We provide the training, but as our user said, you'll "just be able to pick it up and use it."

How important is ease of use to your workplace?

This week our customer success team is BUSY onboarding facilities, getting them up and running with Mobili-T as a vital tool in their dysphagia treatment. What's different now than when we started?

We're seeing these facilities come back after success with Mobili-T at one site, to expand across multiple sites. 🎯 🎯 🎯

They've seen the proven impact that biofeedback with Mobili-T can have in terms of 👍 improving outcomes and 💰 cutting costs associated with dysphagia, so we're helping them scale.

👇Download our guide to reducing dysphagia care costs to see some of the benefits that led these sites to expand.

https://zurl.co/lGIH

How do you select the right tech for health-related goals and better outcomes?

It helps to know WHY the technology will support you or your patients. Maybe you need it to:
➡ Lead the way to new habits (keep you honest!)
➡ Help you a learn a new skill (teacher!)
➡ Provide feedback on how to do better (personal coach!)
➡ Motivate you to continue (cheerleader!)

Those are a lot to ask, but biofeedback can be each and every one of them. If you're not sure how this applies, here's a refresher on how biofeedback transforms swallowing exercises into SMART goals and you'll want to stay tuned for how biofeedback applies to breathwork.

https://zurl.co/vraD

🏥 Healthcare practitioners, you'll never look at breathing the same way.

Our CEO, Jana Rieger had the chance to speak with medical SLP Christina Kang Rosow. As a trained singer, Christina experienced voice loss and dysphagia which were detrimental to her craft and her mental well being.

Her experience shaped her professional expertise as a SLP, with extensive knowledge in pain management, muscle tension and its impact on voice and swallowing. This intersection of personal and professional makes her perspective a must-listen for anyone who aims to help patients overcome barriers and treat "the whole person".

Listen to the full interview below: 👇
https://zurl.co/WNh6

💡 Want to get your hands on a Breth experience for free? 💡

We're seeking Breth-testers in the Edmonton area to visit the True Angle office and have their very own guided Breth experience.

If you're over 18 and like breathing (😜 isn't that part of being human?!) we'd love to hear from you.

👇 Visit the link to create an IDEATE account and get started. Share with all your fellow breathing humans!

https://zurl.co/rsWT

This is not your average webinar.

This is what it looks like when your facility adopts Mobili-T:
✅ Learn how it works
✅ Set facility-specific goals for use
✅ Receive ongoing support

That’s our Tried and True process. We don’t want evidence-based tools sitting unused, so we make sure you can implement them.

💬 Get in touch to learn more about our Tried and True implementation process.

Caught you in the act!

⚠ Right now you’re likely experiencing “email apnea”: the temporary cessation of breath when you’re in front of a screen.

😡 Unconsciously holding your breath can trigger a “fight or flight” response. Staying in this state for long persiod of time can trigger anxiety, and negatively impact learning memory and sleep).

What to do:
🌬 Become aware of your breath
🌬 Pause and take 3 deep breaths
🌬 Check your posture, sit up!

We help people take charge of things they think they can’t control. So far we’ve made it possible to see your swallowing (Mobili-T) and feel your breathwork ( ), breaking down barriers to improvement in these areas.

How will you take charge of your email apnea today? 👇

How do you advocate for new tech in your workplace?

It usually comes down to 💰💰💰

By making Mobili-T capable of remote therapeutic monitoring (RTM), we've come up with a solution that pays for itself (which makes it a way easier sell to the decision makers).

Mobili-T is FDA-cleared which means it can be used to bill RTM CPT codes. This turns time clinicians are already spending on patient care, into billable time.

Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) with Mobili-T can:
1. Incorporate home program monitoring into your billable time
2. Provide convenient and better access to care
3. Support better outcomes for patients
4. Help patients become more engaged in therapy

💬 Comment "RTM" for a guide you can use to advocate for providing RTM services and how Mobili-T makes this possible.

Have you ever felt like your work and personal life overlap?

Or maybe a personal story has influenced your work. As caring professionals this can leave you burnt out. If this is the case, you'll want to hear medical SLP, Ting-fen Lin's story. In the latest episode of the Enjoy the Life You're Living podcast, Jana Rieger speaks with Ting-Fen about her personal journey into breathwork and how she used this to inspire her research on how SKY (Sudarshan Kriya Yoga) can benefit her patients. Ting-fen's perspective is so honest, everyone is sure to hear something they can relate to - clinically and personally.

Pause and catch a breath while you listen to this podcast (even if you listen at 1.5x playback speed...because we know the time struggle is real). We'd love to hear from you about how your work and life inspire each other!

Ting-fen Lin - Enjoy The Life You're Living Season 2, Episode 24 Ting-fen Lin Hosts & Guests: Jana Rieger & Ting-fen Lin Episode Guest Ting-fen Lin is a medical speech-language pathologist by training. She works as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communicative Sciences & Deaf Studies, California State University, Fresno. Her area....

Voice therapy may be the key for some dysphagia patients!

While not appropriate for everyone, some patients may exhibit dysphagia without any known underlying causes, except for muscle tension.

Treatment options include many of the same techniques used for muscle tension dysphonia:
-relaxation
-breathwork
-massage
-forward resonance
-postural adjustments

Muscle tension dysphagia is one more circumstance where the respiratory system significantly impacts swallowing.

Let's learn from each other! What has helped your patients with muscle tension dysphagia?

For more information see:
Kang CH, Zhang N, Lott DG. Muscle Tension Dysphagia: Contributing Factors and Treatment Efficacy. Ann Otol Rhinol Laryngol. 2021 Jul;130(7):674-681.

May awareness months are a great time to recognize two causes that form the foundation of True Angle.

In May, we recognize all the SLPs in our community devoting their work to better dysphagia care and we give a shout out to mental health awareness. It affects us all.

Let us know in the comments how you'll be marking these important awareness months.

Did you know True Angle has a team committed to customer success?

This means that there is always someone to ensure you know what you're doing. Our clinical consultants have been BU-SY lately, getting new Mobili-T devices into clinician hands and training them on the perks of sEMG with Mobili-T.

After new devices are deployed, we ask for feedback on the user's experience with implementation. This last round had us blushing, and remembering why we put Mobili-T out there in the first place - better tools and workflow for clinicians and better outcomes for patients all contribute to a better health system.

If you've had a chance to use Mobili-T, we'd love to hear about your experience 👇

In honor of Parkinson's Awareness Day, we're bringing awareness to a treatment technique we're very familiar with: the use of biofeedback.

Our very own True Angle team member, Waad Alolayan, is currently researching how sEMG with Mobili-T can help dysphagia patients with PD. Results are promising due to the fact that using visual biofeedback in dysphagia therapy brings an element of mental engagement, necessary for relearning the task.

For more information see Waad's blog article, "Using Biofeedback for Patients with Parkinson’s Disease."

Using Biofeedback for Patients with Parkinson’s Disease - True Angle Medical Using biofeedback for swallowing exercises has been shown to help patients with Parkinson's disease who have swallowing problems/dysphagia.

👀 Have you noticed our logo? We lovingly refer to it as "the cyclops" since it looks like a one-eyed smile.

CEO Jana Rieger explains how it came to be:

"When we were designing the Mobili-T for patients, we needed a way to guide them to put the sensor on in the correct orientation. Our design team decided on three indentations, one that the thumb could go in and that would line up over the mandible, and two that could line up over the muscles. These indentations were positioned on the device to indicate where the sensors were. The two for the muscles eventually got connected with a smile and the cyclops was born. Unlike some of the cyclops in mythology, the Mobili-T cyclops has a sunny disposition! On a deeper level, like the cyclops of old, ours also represents strength, which we think of in the strength of the muscles being rehabilitated and the mental fortitude of our patients during their journeys with dysphagia."

Scroll through to see some of the ways the cyclops has appeared in our everyday lives, reminding us of the important things.

Every year in the US, 68,000 people are diagnosed with oral, head and neck cancers.

April is Oral, Head and Neck Awareness month and we're moving for head and neck cancer awareness!

Dysphagia is a devastating short and long term side effect of head and neck cancers which makes it a big focus for the work we do. Join us next month to see what we get up to while raising funds and awareness for this important cause!

https://headandneckcanceralliance.salsalabs.org/24MoveAThon/t/trueanglemedicaltechnologies

Find the link to our donation page in our bio.

Move-A-Thon for Head & Neck Cancer Alliance This April, we invite you to move with us for our 2nd annual Head and Neck Cancer Alliance Move-A-Thon. Help us raise funds and awareness for head and neck cancers by getting your "move" on! All donations go towards funding our programs.

Giveaway alert!

The latest episode of the Enjoy the Life You're Living Podcast just came out. This episode features Dr. Tim Stockdale, SLP and founder of Gap Education, who is on a mission to improve dysphagia care and education. To celebrate, we're teaming up with Tim to offer a free tuition to Gap Education's live upcoming course.

Dysphagia Management in Patients With Pulmonary Compromise: ICU and Beyond is happening on April 20 and will feature 7 hours of education from some of the most current clincians and advocates for advancing dysphagia care.

For your chance to win free tuition:
1) Make sure you're following True Angle
2) Sign up for the Dysphagia Digest by DM'ing us your email
3) Tag a friend in the comments

We'll also be running the giveaway on Instagram and LinkedIn, so check in there for another entry!

Winner will be announced on Friday March 22.

Want better exercise adherence and access to care for dysphagia patients?

Yes please! 🙋

Find out how this is possible in our FREE webinar. Join two of True Angle's in-house experts for:

🤔 Cracking the Code: Remote Therapeutic Monitoring With Dysphagia Exercises 🤔

📆 March 27 @5:00 MDT/7:00 EDT

Follow the link to find out more and register. We can't wait to see you there!

https://meet.zoho.com/xrzDL01ubW

Do you have mentors who have made a difference in how you practice? Or maybe patients who inspire you to dig a little deeper to come up with creative solutions?

Dysphagia therapy is a science and an art. Training leans heavily into the science, but the art of knowing what science to apply is something that is honed more subtly over time, by those who influence our learning as clinicians.

Our latest blog post features the story of a patient with a long history of dysphagia, and Taylor Maumee Bay Mobile Speech Services, LLC. who decided to seek new answers using Mobili-T.

In her interview, Taylor gave a shoutout to Ed Bice IOPI Medical LLC and Ianessa Humbert Swallowing Wellness Center for being absolutely influential in her critical thinking around dysphagia therapy. Read our latest blog (link in bio) and let us know in the comments who has been influential in your career.

It's about time we reintroduced ourselves! 👋

True Angle is a group of clinicians, engineers, designers and researchers brought together by a common goal of introducing research-backed tech innovation to the commercial market. Mobili-T is our first success!

Co-founded by CEO, Jana Rieger, she admits that she and her colleagues didn’t even attempt consistent swallowing exercises with as many of their dysphagia patients as they would like to…what got in the way? Research shows swallowing exercises work but they couldn't seem to bridge the gap from research to practice.

It was time, consistency, convenience and lack of feedback.

Building on the technology available in most people's pockets (hello smartphones!), they set out to design a convenient solution to these barriers. Since then, Mobili-T has evolved from a portable sEMG device to a robust system designed to provide feedback and track patients' progress while completing their dysphagia exercises both in clinic and at home.

Introduce yourself 👇 if you share our vision of making technology an accessible part of improving health and wellness.

Do you work with head and neck cancer patients and their families?

We're always looking for ways to contribute to research that betters the lives of our patients. This is why we're interested in the work of Dr. Ting-fen Lin at Fresno State University. Dr. Lin is conducting research on the impact of breathwork (have you heard of True Angle's newest innovation Brethtech?) on head and neck cancer patients. 🌎 She is looking for participants from anywhere in the world.

💨This is an approved research study that looks at the impacts of an evidence-based breathwork meditation program — Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) — on the quality of life for individuals/survivors with head-and-neck cancer and their caregivers.

💻Participants will learn SKY online in a group, led by a certified instructor live. They will also complete questionnaires a few times and a 1:1 interview online.

💰Participants will learn SKY for free, which is otherwise available to the public for $395. If you are interested in participating in this research study or have questions about it, please contact Ting-fen Lin, Ph.D., CCC-SLP at [email protected] or 559-278-2029

Share this to spread the word about Dr. Lin's study and its significant impact on advancing our understanding of these critical health issues.

🚀 Something big has been in the works at True Angle!🚀

SLPs know the connection between swallowing and respiration. So here's what we're doing with that.

Introducing Brethtech , the next step in our journey.

The team has been hard at work, developing technology that enhances the body's respiratory capabilities and – a welcomed by-product – its natural ability to manage stress. Like the Mobili-T, Breth does this through guided, sensory-rich exercise sessions.

How did we go down this path from dysphagia to stress-relief?

Can you think of anything more stressful than the anxiety you would feel about choking every time you swallow a bite of food? Or that you are at constant risk of developing aspiration pneumonia because of your swallowing difficulty? What if we could harness the proven benefits of breathwork to improve these symptoms for dysphagia patients, and an even broader audience?

Our talented team of researchers, clinicians, engineers and designers who got Mobili-T off the ground proved that there was more we could do. Mobili-T continues to make life better for clinicians and their patients with dysphagia, and now Breth is here to expand that and to target even more widespread health and wellness epidemics – respiratory health and stress.

Using the same principles of biofeedback and exercise adherence as Mobili-T, our team has transformed the possibilities of breathwork into an easy-to-use, impeccably designed wearable device.

Follow along Brethtech to see how we're taking respiratory wellness to new heights.

Visit https://launch.brethtech.com/1 to join the launch.

Have you subscribed to the Dysphagia Digest?

Every couple months we round up the best resources on dysphagia care and technology.

The internet is vast. Let us do the sifting for you.

Get in touch with us and we'll get you signed up!

https://www.trueanglemedical.com/connect/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=Zoho+Social&utm_content=Haveyousub