Glenn Tookey’s Mission to Advance Independence for the Visually Impaired With Sight and Sound Technology

As head of Sight and Sound Technology, the largest supplier and distributor of technology and devices designed for visually impaired and blind individuals, Glenn Tookey wouldn’t be disappointed if he went out of business. But until there are cures for all eye diseases, he remains a strong advocate for his customers.

OIS Podcast host Rob Rothman, MD, kicked off a lively discussion with Tookey that covers the company’s beginnings four decades ago, how he evaluates new products, and how he plans to bring those products to more patients.

Tookey’s tech career includes stints in telecom, data processing, and even pinball machine repair. In 2008, he saw a mobile phone designed to help people with vision loss. Inspired by the design and the purpose, he later bought Sight and Sound.

As CEO, Tookey frequently evaluates new technology from emerging inventors and developers. He also readily advises on design, market access, and launch elements for products that aren’t ready for prime time. Too often, he said, innovators fail to address pricing (too expensive), market access (no reimbursement), or usability (too obtrusive or complicated).

Moving forward, Tookey plans to stay on top of new technology and widen the company’s reach. Connecting patients to products is as much of a challenge in the UK and Ireland as it is in the United States, but he’s hoping to change that. Tookey wants to raise awareness with ophthalmologists, occupational therapists, opticians, and teachers to promote referrals and bring greater independence to the blind and visually impaired.

Listen to this podcast to discover:

• What Tookey sees as the most exciting solutions for creating independence for the visually impaired and the blind.
• The potential for augmented reality and virtual reality in this space.
• The reimbursement challenges for visual impairment hardware, software, and services in the UK, Ireland, and the US.
• The biggest mistake inventors make when developing devices for the visually impaired or blind.

Click “play” to listen.

Transcript:

Rob Rothman, MD:
Hello OIS podcast audience, I think most of you probably know me by now. My name is Rob Rothman. For those of you who don’t, I am a practicing ophthalmologist and glaucoma specialist by training. And I am also the co founder and CO managing member of infocus Capital Partners, which is an ophthalmic specific venture capital fund, currently completed our first fund with 13 assets and are in the process of structuring second Fund, which we hope to launch next year, part of the function of OIS over the years has been to bring together people inside of Ophthalmology at multiple levels, both from the finance and business perspective and from the academic and thought leader perspective. And over the course of time that I’ve been involved with OIS, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with many people who are involved in disparate different aspects of the business side of Ophthalmology. And the majority of those companies that we’ve interacted with are all involved in trying to actually put our next or this current podcast guest out of business, which is that they are trying to prevent visual loss and cheer up Ophthalmic disease. But unfortunately, that’s not always possible. And there are a significant number of patients out there who have lost significant amounts of visual function or who are blind. And Glenn Tookey, who is our guest today is the CEO of sight and sound technology, which is the largest company in the United Kingdom, that supplies and supports technology, which is designed to improve the lives of people with low vision and blindness. And I feel over the course of my own interaction with industry, that the number of companies that are involved in developing this technology is smaller than it probably should be. And while there are some significantly promising technologies out there, especially in the AR, and virtual reality worlds, clearly, we need to we need to do better. So with that as an introduction, Glenn, welcome to the podcast today. And thank you for taking the time to speak with us.

Glenn Tookey:
Yes, thanks, Rob, and thanks for the intro. And yes, you haven’t put me out of business yet?

Rob Rothman, MD:
Well, we don’t want to do it intentionally. But I think ultimately, we would both agree that if nobody needed your services, we would be doing an amazing job of taking care of patients. So you know, from the investor perspective, you know, most of the companies that we come across are looking for cures. Right. So that’s ultimately what what we’re trying to do. But yeah, no, I don’t think you’re going out of business anytime, anytime soon.

Glenn Tookey:
anytime soon, to be fair with this subject matter this top topic, then maybe I wouldn’t be so upset if someone didn’t put me out of business, because I’d solved all of the slight problems in the in the world, I go off and find something else to do.

Rob Rothman, MD:
So Glenn, I think, you know, we’ve we’ve had a lot of different, you know, CEOs on on the podcast before, but you know, your pathway is a little bit different. And especially coming away from, let’s say, the scientific entrepreneur, you’re more of a business entrepreneur who has figured out a place for, for the services you provide. Tell us a little about your background and how you ended up doing this.

Glenn Tookey:
Yeah, it’s interesting how I ended up here. I’ve been always in the technology industry, actually. And I started my life fixing pinball machines on the on the coast in the UK, but got me into technology got me into all sorts of stuff like valves and relays and things that have long since gone in the solid state world, but moved through to British Telecom, the telecoms company and worked my way up into a position of development, product management. And that started my interest in actually tech, how tech can be best put together into solutions to serve different markets. And I went on into data processing and data hosting. And then I moved into being as you say, a business entrepreneur, I started to buy and sell companies and merged them put them together to provide more and more capability and solutions into the marketplace. So then one day, someone showed me a mobile phone that was quite clever. This is back in 2008, when you could take a picture of a piece of paper and it was scan it and read it back for someone who had sight loss. And I looked and thought, You know what? This is very interesting. And this is tech really doing something good. When in the tech industry, so much of the tech is really designed to make profit for somebody. This is actually designed to do good for somebody. So I looked hard, and there’s Remington man says, lightly so much I bought the company. And then here I am. And that was a five year project that I started 15 years ago. And I’ve enjoyed it so much. You know, I love being in the industry, because that’s what we do you go home at the end of the day and feel you’ve done good for somebody.

Rob Rothman, MD:
So you know, that’s so that pathway is not dissimilar from other pathways, you came across something that, you know, sparked your interest, you know, made you felt could create a business around it, and you ended up buying it and growing it into what is now I believe, the largest company of its kind in the United Kingdom. Is that correct?

Glenn Tookey:
Yeah, that’s correct. We the largest by some by some measure, actually, in the UK. Yeah.

Rob Rothman, MD:
So one of the the questions that I, you know, that I think would probably be asked, at least from the business perspective is how do you decide? Or how do you come across the technologies that you decide to distribute? What is the filter process? And what’s the mechanism by which you’re able to evaluate these technologies and decide that this is something that you think would be beneficial? Or is it sort of an open, you know, sort of opportunistic process for you to just take whatever people want to sell and put it out there? Is there some internal mechanics that you have for sort of vetting these products are for validating their utility? Or how does it work?

Glenn Tookey:
Yeah, these two handed to me, really, Rob, firstly, I want the best products, I want the products that actually help people the most and make me the most profit, I guess, in the day, but yeah, it’s really about meeting market needs. So I am, and I have developed the master distribution of the world’s leading brands. So that’s great that sought out today’s business and gets me to the best place with the best support. And I go to market. But then, of course, as we know, in technology, the world evolves, technology comes and goes. And actually, in my lifetime working in the technology industry, that lifecycle of technology gets shorter, and shorter and shorter. And now I used to say, every five years, I need to forget everything I ever knew. And start again, I would say it’s almost down to three years now, I have to forget everything I knew, and start again. And as I’m getting to be a bit of an old boy, you know, sometimes relearning the new tech comes into the challenge. But that’s the other half of what I do. I searched the world, for inventors, and developers and people who are bringing tech to the market. And not only do I try to add value by being the person who can tell you the market, obviously, the United Kingdom, the territories where my business operates, but actually also to provide that knowledge. And know how that I have over the 40 odd years of working in tech as to how to bring technology to market in a way which is successful, is all well and good, having features that help people but it’s got to be packaged in a way which people can use it, it’s got to be supportable, it’s got to be tradable. It’s got to be fixable, and so many of those mundane, but very important features of technology are forgotten by the people who think they’ve got a great widget. But then as Apple approved so well, that if you put it together in a certain way and support it and market it in certain ways. And it becomes the thing that helps people the most. So I’ve done two handed one, I’ve got this ramp of business, because I’m the biggest, and I get the best. But then I go out to say, well, that’s not going to be always the case. So let’s go out and find and help people who are investing and inventing and help bring them to market, of course, be the guy who takes you to market for them.

Rob Rothman, MD:
So it’s an interesting point. I think one of the reasons why this is such a relevant discussion for OIS in that is that there are companies out there that are looking to to develop products to improve the lives of the visually impaired and the blind. And I wonder how often those people would reach out to let’s say, you or somebody like you that obviously you’ll talk about your own experience as to you know, what things they should be considering in their product design. It’s one of the biggest flaws that we as a venture fund, see in companies that come to us is that haven’t really addressed the issues of let’s say reimbursement. And you know, whether or not people are going to be able to afford this technology. And you know, are there design issues that could be solved early that, you know, let’s say scientists may not be aware of because they don’t speak to somebody who’s got, you know, a network of distribution that that’s huge. Does this happen? Do you find that entrepreneurs reach out to you at all? Have they come to you with questions?

Glenn Tookey:
Oh, yes, they do. And as we’ve grown and as obviously I’ve been in the industry many years now, people know who we are and what we do. So they come to us, like everybody like we are doing here. I talk and people understand what I do. What experience I’ve got. So that feeds people to say, hey, Glenn, my name is something Glenn, maybe it’ll help us Glenn actually, maybe I’ll take our product to market. Many people come to me, because I’m the UK is largest player, and say, Well, we’re gonna be talking to Glenn on site and sound, because if we’re gonna be successful, we need to have them distributing our products. And many of them come to me. And actually, so often, they haven’t thought about the business model, or actually, the way in which their technology will be used by someone. Because if it doesn’t fit into the business model of the industries, or the structures in which they’re going to be used, some of the products are just unusable. They could be too expensive. That’s the easy one. But, for example, the one of the holy grails that is trying to be cracked at the moment is navigation, how’d you get people with low vision or no vision from A to B? And when they get to be? How do you get them inside to navigate inside? Well, so many people are looking at technology, which is, which is smart, but 10 years old, smart, so beacons or QR codes, placed on walls so that you can sort of scan them and know where you are? Well, that’s old tech. And that requires the venue owner, for example, to fix that, to plan that to, to map their routes. For example, when you’re outside is no good sending someone from A to B, as they would be in a car. Because if you’re blind chap, and you might be walking down the middle of the road, you need your navigation solution to be able to keep you on the pavement. How do you do that, because that’s not what Google Maps will do for you today. So some people come to market with clever tech, sometimes based on solutions for other industries. Great example, actually, the automotive driverless car industry is sporting a massive amount of technology. And if you can get a car from A to B without a driver, maybe you can get a blind person from A to B without sight, the answer says you can, but you need to have a slightly different set of parameters around that. And that’s really where people come to me. And we start to help them think through the 50,000 or so people we support and say, Well, if this tech is going to work for them, it needs to do this operate in this way manifests itself, this might be fixed like this. And yes, people want to be from all over the world, actually. And I’m playing with all sorts of clever AI driven tech now, because it’s miniaturizing is getting clever and self learning. That’s just the sort of thing that this market needs going forwards, actually. So the world is exploding for blind and low vision people with tech at the moment. Yeah, people come to me and ask me those questions.

Rob Rothman, MD:
I think that the universal agreement. In the ophthalmology community that obviously the goal here is the creation of independence. Right, try to give people with visual impairments, some ability to be independent, and move about the world. You’ve mentioned briefly AI, but what do you think the future is? What do you think, are the most viable solutions for, you know, creating independence for blind and visually impaired people, knowing that there is a significant technological revolution going on, especially as it relates to let’s say, GPS navigation? Is there a specific thing that you think has greater potential than others are certain areas that you’re looking for specifically to provide something a little bit more concrete?

Glenn Tookey:
Yeah, there is some very, very clever tech out there. And a great example, is that navigation space, but it has to be more than just mapping. Okay, so I’m looking and seeing tech that actually has some form of mechanical capability as well, so that it points you in the right direction. One of the things if you’re blind, you might not be to see but you know, if your finger in front of you is pointing left or pointing right, you can feel your finger. So actually, if Tech was so clever, and I’m working with people now who are doing this, that actually, you’re trying to go from A to B, and instead of saying go left or go right, it actually bends the finger, or the thing you’re holding in your hand, and points you in the right direction, and then bends back the other way where you need to turn is that precise, then suddenly, you’ve got something which is really usable. Now that is not beacon lead or, or QR code driven. That is real live AI in action. And they’re getting down to that sort of level of granularity. So crack navigation internal and externally. For example, again, I walk in through my house, I know where I’m going from A to B. I map that as I walk through it, with my device in my pocket, or my phone even that can be pushed up into the cloud. Next person who comes to my front door, can download that map and follow the map that’s been mapped in real time. It’s called clue technology. Now that type of technology is out there, and is now able to come to market in the next two to three years. And, and that’s not the type of thing we’re seeing. So it’s all augmentation, and even, you know, all the technology, really to make, make someone who has no sight at all be able to use it in the right context. And that’s what people perhaps miss at the start when they’re trying to develop something. They make assumptions that sighted people make that people without sight don’t make.

Rob Rothman, MD:
Yeah, there’s, you know, there’s a significant, there are many companies out there, and I would have to mention them here on the podcast, they know who they are. And most people know who they are, who are, you know, actively pursuing the augmented reality space for navigational enhancement? For people, mostly with central retinal issues, macular degeneration, for example, where there is enough information in the world available to the patient, that an augmentation of that landscape would provide the ability for, you know, movement and navigation. Is that stuff that you’ve come across at this point yet? Is there anything out there? In the augmented reality space that’s sort of making its way into the market at this point?

Glenn Tookey:
Yes, yes, I do. And there’s probably a couple of handfuls now of products that are based on augmented augmented reality or virtual reality. But hey, what is one of the things that so that’s very clever stuff, like, okay, it’s particularly for low vision, where you’ve got some sight, and you can actually use the little bit of vision you’ve got by presented the image to the part of the eye that can see rather than the part, the can’t see, that’s all very clever, the one thing you miss there, a lot of people don’t want to walk around with a ski mask strapped to their head, right? So however clever it is, then there are people who just will not feel comfortable, and feel embarrassed, even if they can’t see the people around them. And the way they look at them, they know that they’re not the same as everyone, what a blind person or leveraging person really wants you to fit in on obtrusively with the with the world in which they live. And augmented reality headsets, VR headsets, don’t do that. Now, that’s not to say they won’t catch on. That’s not to say they’re not being sold. But there’s some very clever tech out there. And I mentioned the Orkambi, because it’s, it’s a global, globally successful product. Now that’s there’s got there because that is quite unobtrusive. But then there’s other technology based on Google Glass, that is also quite unobtrusive. And those, you can see are going to fit in better to the way in which people want to use the tech, even though there’s other tech out there, based on AR and VR, that might be just as clever. It’s not as it’s not as unobtrusive and therefore doesn’t fit in as well.

Rob Rothman, MD:
I would agree, I think that there’s, you know, some significant disadvantages to some of these technologies, for the exact reasons that you’ve specified. And I think that they will get better as well. But I think a bigger problem, at least, from my own perspective, as a practicing ophthalmologist, who deals with complicated glaucoma patients, I have significant number of patients who’ve lost visual function, you know, over the course of time, and one of the problems that we have here, and I don’t know if it’s the same in the UK or not, is that the distribution of product to the actual patient is complicated. And there aren’t very many places, at least in my geography, where people can turn to to get access to this type of technology, usually low vision specialists, of which there are some, you know, certain foundations like The Lighthouse Foundation, and the Helen Keller services here in New York, for example, which are able to steer patients directly, but I feel like there’s a little bit of a paucity of a network, or let’s say, a well developed network in the United States, or at least in my area, where people can actually go to like when when people come to me and they say, Hey, I can’t do this. I feel sort of impotent. And there’s nothing that I can really do except give them access to these resources. Is it the same for you? How do patients find you? And how do they get access to the products that you distribute?

Glenn Tookey:
Yeah, so that’s, that’s the golden, the golden nugget, if we can solve that one, we’ve probably sold it for all of us, because what generally happens is in each of the regions in the US and the US is no different than the UK the same is that people with low vision get routed into the system and then aggregated in regions by local charities. And then people like us work with the charities to you know, to provide that link. But you got to find that charity the first time you’re gonna find that Lighthouse Foundation. I have been in the UK for last two to three years, working with people like yourself, and I’ve been trying to educate and communicate with the different layers of the onion from the center out was said this Centuries of low vision charity, where you’ve got to know about them, you got to be routed to them to get to people like me. I started move out to people like eyecare liaison officers in hospitals and people who are working in the school system quality. Teachers have visual impairment to TVI as we call them. They deal with people with low vision every day. They don’t know about the tech. So we got to educate them, and then people get referred to us move one step further out to occupational therapists, ophthalmologists, then you start to get people who do deal everyday with it, but really on the side that you guys deal with, which is you know, how to fix what is fixable, and you educate them that when you can’t fix someone, maybe they should be talking to someone like us, because if they’ve got the funds, or the systems, fund them, then they can get to that independence through us. Then even about one more layer of the onion to opticians now, opticians are used to making extraordinary good returns on frames, and lenses. And when they get to the type of returns, sadly, we baggy our industry, they’re not interested in distributing our products. And the only ones who really deal with us are the ones who have a moral interest, and really got a moral obligation to help people who can’t be helped with lenses and frames to say, hey, we can’t do anything for you, but go and see people outside themselves. And we try to educate that chain all the way through. And we’ve talked to 1000s and 1000s of people and show them the tech and face to face in their hands. And by webinars over the last few years as well. And I have to say, the take up is low, the take up is slow. To me people get diverted back into their daytime job and don’t think about or don’t push themselves to add that extra service into their, into their offerings. So we find it really hard Rob, to get to those end users, we deal with the charities who invested it. It’s how people like Paul Ryb, who joined us together, got to us, he’s works with charities, he works with investment in eye care, he is visually impaired, he is one of my customers, so he sees the link. But you know, you need people who’ve who forgive the pun, open their eyes and, and look right down to the other end of the world that we work in and say, Hey, these guys could help someone, I’m seeing these people, I could read them, but doesn’t really happen. As well as it might and we see far too few people I think really?

Rob Rothman, MD:
Well, I think I mean, you know, it’s interesting, and we’ve had this discussion internally at infocus, about some of these technologies. And part of the issue is, and this is not the type of analogy gender like to make, but God forbid somebody has an injury where they lose a limb, you know, there is a very honed, well defined process whereby somebody can have a prosthetic limb. And it is a defined process with people who are in place to do the work. And the insurance is completely amenable to this type of cost structure. And, you know, you don’t there doesn’t seem to be the same type of difficulty as it is with ophthalmology. And while people don’t generally lose their eye in the same way that people can lose limbs, they certainly lose visual function, which is the same analogy. And yet the process is so poorly defined. And we don’t know who’s out there pushing for better reimbursement for the services, because I think naturally, that’s what will drive the systems into place. If people you know, were aware that they were going to be reimbursed for distributing these products and for training patients. And there was a system that compensated those people appropriately and took some of the cost burden away from the patient. I think that we would see a change in the utilization of these, you know, technological advancements in these products, but it just doesn’t seem to be in the forefront of of anybody’s picture. And I don’t understand why when there are so many people with visual impairment out there.

Glenn Tookey:
Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And so in the UK, there’s only two places that you get funding for visually impairment. One, if you’re at university, not college, not school, at university, the government will fund your needs, all the equipment’s training and support you need. And the other place, of course, is in the workplace. We have a scheme called Access to Work and if you are visually impaired and you go into the workplace, then the government will reimburse your employer for the cost of the equipment they are. And you think that’s that’s pretty good, but that doesn’t cover the people who lose their sight through age related conditions. They get nothing. And actually that is the biggest part of my market now in Europe in Western Europe. That is an insurance based industry and the Hey yo, you won’t be surprised to hear actually the cost of products is three to four times the cost of the same product, only 200 miles away in the UK, sometimes because we’re in a competitive market, and they’re in a insurance funded market, but nevertheless, in Belgium, in France, in Germany, in the Netherlands, they are funded, and people have much more access to the technology in the UK, very much like the US, you sort of on your own when you’re outside those government funded schemes. And, and this, this technology is not is not cheap. And another point you made, you know how people find you, well, I have to go to the house generally, or the person who I’m looking to serve. So that’s a, that’s $100 truck roll, every time I go to just to demonstrate to someone, okay, if one in three by then that’s a $300, truck roll, so you can start to see how the cost of delivery, the cost of support, on top of the cost of tech starts to make this quite an expensive technology for the people who need it. So my screen reader for the blind is called JAWS. And that makes a computer speak everything that’s on the screen for someone who’s blind is very clever. But it’s, it’s about 1000 UK pounds. So it’s about today, just over $1,000 As the cloud has collapsed the day, no, but you know, it’s expensive. Now, if it was $100, would I sell 10 times as much you bet I would. But I couldn’t get it to the market for $100. And that is one of the little challenges about this, it’s not about the tech, always, sometimes it’s just about the business model and the affordability, and how you can get into the market, because the elasticity is very, very different in the market. So that is one of our challenges is expensive tech, not funded by government, and therefore really only able to be sold to the people who can afford it.

Rob Rothman, MD:
I mean, and you think about the number of patients out there who, you know, are visually impaired, who don’t have the means to you know, afford this type of technology. And it would seem as though some of the burden of that cost would fall upon whether it’s government, or commercial insurers at least here in the United States, to bear some of that burden. And I just, you’re making me think and now I feel like I need to do a little bit of more work on my own here to find some, some of the people out here, you know, who can address these issues, maybe from The Lighthouse Foundation here, Helen Keller, and identify what the barriers are to implementation of these services and try and figure out how to get access to this technology, you know, in the hands of people more readily. But, you know, it’s a problem. And, you know, I think just to summarize, as we start to wind down our time here, that they’re obviously we’re grateful for people, you know, like you have made a business out of this, the fact that you can support yourself, your family, make a living doing this while providing the service, I think is admirable. And ultimately, I think that your involvement in the process of development of this technology, along with people who seek out your opinion is probably to their benefit. And, you know, we should be commended for providing that, that information, you know, to people as they try and develop better ways to give visually impaired and blind people some some independence and mobility.

Glenn Tookey:
Yeah, I mean, thank you very much for those words, because I think we try very hard inside our industry to make it work where we can, but it takes time and it takes effort. But it’s not something we give up at we really enjoy it and happy to engage all the time with people who’ve got something that they think might work.

Rob Rothman, MD:
Yeah, well listen, for anybody out there who is interested in, you know, speaking with Glenn, or getting his opinion or learning more about, you know, the services that he provides. You know, I think you should go ahead and do that. Obviously, OIS will provide a link for you. And during your evaluation of this podcast. And Glenn, I just want to thank you, on behalf of all is in the listening audience for taking the time to speak with us today. And you know, look forward to catching up with you again in the future, maybe as we try and figure out ways to get your technology in the hands of more and more people.

Glenn Tookey:
Yeah, thank you. It’s been absolutely fantastic to talk to you guys today. And yeah, all the best with what you’re doing because I really enjoy your podcast and I learned something from the other side of the industry listening into it as well.

Rob Rothman, MD:
Happy to provide that service. So everybody in the OIS podcast audience, thanks for listening today. And looking forward to speaking with you again soon.