Frederico Carpinteiro
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Frederico did his Masters in Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering in FEUP, Portugal before attending programs in start-up acceleration and technology commercialization, which were both completed in 2015. Before founding Adapttech, Frederico was a researcher for a Portuguese research group, BioStar, in bio-related image processing and analysis.
During his Masters degree, he realized that there was a gap in the health market: most of the research efforts in this field were directed to find the definitive solution to a problem, and that there was no one trying to find a solution that would improve the quality of life of people with physical limitations while the definitive solution does not exist.
Frederico’s vision led to the development of the company’s lead product, INSIGHT, which is designed to improve the fitting process of lower-limb prostheses. It combines a laser scanner, biosensors, wearable technology, and a mobile app to make it faster and easier to correctly fit prostheses and monitor a patient’s rehabilitation process.
Adapttech was founded in 2015 and within a year of launching the company, the team had grown to 10 people and continues to expand. Now the company has around 20 employees and three offices in different countries: United Kingdom - HQ, Portugal – R&D, and United States - Sales.
In 2021, Fred was chosen as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Europe Class of 2021, in the Science & Healthcare category. Frederico is now part of the world’s most impactful community of young entrepreneurs and game-changers.
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Frederico Carpinteiro - Adapt Tech.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
Hello, everybody. This is Gustavo, your host of the Enabled Disabled podcast. It is my pleasure to introduce Fred Carpinteiro. He is coming all the way from Portugal, and Fred is a buyer biomechanical engineer. He started a fantastic company called Adap ech, which is really focused in on helping people who wear prosthetics and their lower limbs. It has a really interesting scanning technology. It's analyzing the different pressures inT the socket, which really helps for comfort and better fit and better experience overall. Just a quick description of myself. I am Brazilian. I have short black hair come to the front. I'm sitting in my conference room, and I have a black Polo shirt on. Fred, welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to have you here.
Hi, Gustavo. Nice to be here. Really glad to be here.
Absolutely. I have a lot of questions for you, but I really like this insight that you had when you were going to school. You were getting your engineering degree. You did some research for an imaging company. What helped you realize this gap in the market that so many people are concerned with solving for curing the disease or curing the disability, rather than trying to make the people's lives better and more livable, more adaptable so that we can function better throughout our lives? When did that insight first come to you?
It was several things throughout the degree and even before going to University. But one of the things that made most difference to me on that was my grandparents. So my grandmother, she has Parkinson. My grandfather, he had some heart condition that would cause him to shake a lot. And I suffer with my grandfather. That the problem of shaking. Not being able to eat by himself, not being able to drink coffee had a huge impact on his life. He stopped going to the coffee to see his friends. He stopped having a social life and getting out of the house just because he was embarrassed by not being able to do things by himself. He wasn't able to play cards with his friends. He wasn't able to drink coffee by himself. And that has a huge impact on his life. So if we think about it, if we could find a solution for that specific symptom of the health problems he had, it would have been a huge transformation on his life, and it would make him a lot happier than what it was in these final days. So that's one of the main drivers. It was understanding that sometimes the solution to very simple problems can have a huge impact on people's lives.
Absolutely. It's very true. And it's interesting that you had that experience, because often times we've had plenty of people here on the show where with chronic illness or with various kinds of disabilities. And it's not always about the cure. It's about making our lives better so that we can function, we can live, we can prosper, we can give back. We can work, do whatever it takes. So when you first started doing the research in the bio imaging space, is that when the idea started to form? Like, how did you think of lower limb prosthetics as a potential solution? What drove you there?
When I joined the engineering degree that I was doing, I was always very curious about the Bionic hands and the prosthetic limbs because I thought I always find it impressive, the ability to replace something that is no longer there and try to do it with as much functionality as possible. So when I was doing the degree and I was not having enough opportunities to put in practice what I was learning, I joined Biostar. That was a research group that was with PhD students mentoring master students, and I told them that I would like to work with some project related to prosthetics because that was something that I was really interested about. And at the time, they had that challenge of being able to scan the inside of a prosthetic socket, and that's how it started. So I started working on that project, and when we got to the point of, okay, we need to build a prototype because there is some mechanical hardware, there is some electronic hardware that we need to do attached to the software part of it. The group had no funding because it was a different type of research group. So I started going to pitch contests and to start up contests, and we started getting a lot of good feedback, and we even want some of them.
And that's on the process of going to those contests, I needed to do some market research. So I started talking with people on the prosthetics market, and I started to realize that the problem was much bigger than what I thought and that it could have a huge impact on people's lives. And that's how I started to get more into it and developing the solution further. And when I finished the degree, I decided, okay, I'll give it a shot. I'll see if I can create a business that can try to solve these needs and use this technology to improve people's lives, and that's how it all started, pretty much.
Did you always have because clearly you're a talented engineer, but did you always have that entrepreneurial spirit, or was this more something that you were problem solving and you just wanted to see the solution through to the end?
I think it was a bit of both. Before going to University, every time, even from a little kid, every time I wanted to be something as a career, I always wanted to be the one deciding the path or doing new things. So I think I always had that idea. But when I joined the University during the degree, I just wanted to be an engineer. I just wanted to be able to do new things. But once I started to get into this entrepreneurial environment again and building my own business, I realized that that was what really made me happy and what I was really good at. So I stopped doing the engineering bit since 2017, pretty much, because I found out that I'm more talented and I'm better at doing the management side of things and getting people on board and moving the company forward, while giving all the conditions I can to people that work at Adaptech, that are the best engineers I know and that are really talented in what they do.
Can you talk a little bit? I know a lot of entrepreneurs who have a disability around the world, and a lot of them talk about how difficult it is to get funding for adaptive technology. Can you talk a little bit about your experience with that and some of the how you were able to achieve that and some advice for future entrepreneurs who are in that space of what they can do, what resources and what your experience was like?
Yeah. Getting funding, I think it's one of the biggest challenges for any startup. I think when you have hard work, it gets worse. When you're in the medical space, it's even worse. And when you're in the medical space, but in the adaptive technology space that you're usually working for a niche, it gets even more difficult because your prospective market is not that large. You talk about the problem for MPCs, and most people think it's a small population, that it's not a problem that affects a lot of people because they don't see it every day. So it's a real challenge when you're trying to solve something that is not generally known for most of the population and it's not attractive or high tech looking, and that makes it more difficult in terms of fundraising. And in our case, since we were starting in Portugal and our ecosystem startup ecosystem is quite young and we have especially on healthcare, we have really a small lot of companies working in this space. Fortunately, we just had our first cell tech unicorn, I think, two weeks ago in Portugal, which is, I think, a major step for the ecosystem. But it was really tough because of all of that.
Luckily, we were supported by a program that is a partnership between the Portuguese government and the Carnegie Man University in the United States, and that allows us to go to the United States and meet with a lot of people, create a lot of validation. And when we got back to Portugal, we were able to convince the only specialized health tech VC in Portugal at the time, and they invested in us. From that point on, we started working. We got the opportunity of going into the UK and raise funds in the UK, and that made a huge difference from us because we moved to a much more mature ecosystem with a lot more funds, and since then it has become easier. But I think there is no magic formula on how to do it. You need to talk with as many people as possible and try to sell them your vision and always be positive and find the right match. It's pretty much finding the VC that not only has the money that you need, but has the right fit for your project as well.
Interesting. And I'm assuming that entering these competitions and winning some of them in the beginning really helped you in those early stages to keep going?
Yeah, definitely. All these small supports and these small victories have a huge impact because it keeps you motivated. It sometimes provides you with some funding, even if it's limited, for you to keep moving. So that really helped a lot. And I think, fortunately, in my case, I had the support from my parents, so I was able to work for almost two years spending money to do it. But I know it's not always the case, so I was very lucky on that side as well.
Absolutely. Yeah. It's tricky. And it's interesting that Portugal, the government, has this relationship with Carnegie Mellon. And I think that the more government support that we can get for funding those technologies and those partnerships with those key universities would be a big step in the right direction moving forward.
Yeah, definitely. I think all these small supports that you can get from the government and from the University and from any tech partner are very useful in moving things forward and getting to the right people, because when you start, you have no contact, you have no money, you have nothing. So everything you can get, it's a huge step in the right direction.
When you started developing the product, I know you did some research initially. How did you go about doing that? Did you find people who are amputees or who are using prosthetics, had them test it, get feedback from them. Can you talk a little bit about what the development cycle of it looked like?
Yes. In the beginning, when we started, we found a very good partner here in Portugal that is actually the Prosthetic Clinic, where we have our offices at the moment or are in the offices. And the owner, he's a prosthetist. He's an amputee, and he's also the owner of the clinic. So he has all the stakeholder roles that we needed. And we ended up doing most of the early tests with him. So he was the patient in our test, he was the prostitutes in our test, and he's a very easygoing person and very available. That really helped us a lot on our early days. So it helped us that relationship with that particular clinic being so closed by our offices really helped us on every time we did something, we immediately validated it with the end user and with patients. And we could move very fast on that development cycle of developing and testing, developing and testing that made a huge difference from us.
Interesting. So I want to talk a little bit about I want to dive really deep into the product and also what you're developing next. But I want people to understand, as somebody who's worn a prosthesis my whole life, I'm looking forward to trying this product. I want to get some of the local procedures here in the US that I work with to pick it up, because one of the biggest challenges for me when I'm doing the prosthesis is the fit and the comfort of the socket. There's so many different pressure points, and especially when they change the material up or, you know, as you're getting older, you're gaining weight, you're losing weight, your body's changing over time. There are so many variables there that's for me, it's the alignment of the prosthetic and getting the pressure points correct. I've had so many blisters over the years. A couple of them have turned into much worse cases than that. And I think some of the prostitutes lose a little bit of patience over time because it's difficult to describe. Well, it's hurting right here, but it's in this area, but you don't really know how to describe what you're feeling.
Right. So it becomes this long guessing game, and sometimes they over. Correct. Sometimes they don't do enough. You correct one pressure point and another one comes up. So I think having a visual scanner where people can see this is what's going on inside of the leg and all the points is tremendously beneficial, and it's going to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people. Can you talk a little bit more about some of your what are some big case studies or experiences that you've seen with that?
Yeah, I think you just mentioned what was the biggest point for our system and one of the biggest surprises for us, because when we developed the system, we always developed it as something that could be implemented in the clinical workflow and that could be used every day by the process. That was a major concern for us. So we were very focused on, okay, is this something that will allow the processes to do their job faster and better, so better results with less time and in the end, with less costs for the clinic and for the patient. But the main benefit that we actually ended up seeing was a major improvement in the communication between the FBT and the prospect. That has been where we have seen the most value out of our system, because now with this visual platform where you can see your socket with your pressures as you're doing the tests, you have a common language that you can share. And it's much easier for the amputee to understand the concepts that the process is trying to tell, like the pistoning or any other. And it's much easier for the empty to explain what is feeling and where he's feeling it because now you can see the pressures, and you can relate, okay, if that's on is the right one, and it's close to where I'm feeling it, I know it's there.
So that has made a huge impact in the places that are using our system. That has been the main benefit we are seeing. And just one example. So one of the first patients we did in the US, it was a patient that has been an amputee for 25 years. So a very experienced amputee that's very active as well. It's a delivery driver. So he's on his feet driving every hour of the day. But he has a very particular case because when he was amputated, the artery received it. So he has an artificial artery on the bottom of his residual limb, which is pretty much a plastic, too, because at the time, it's what they use. So we can't have any pressure on that, too. Otherwise, it will block the blood flow, and it will completely lose the sensation of the limb. And when he got to the center that day, the clinician was asking how he was, and he was saying that he was fine, that everything was okay, that he just had to take off his prosthetic a few times a day because he would feel some Nondes in the rim, but he would shake it off and would be back on his feet again, because that's one of the things about MPs is once they get used to it, they start figuring out.
So they start to find out very simple solutions and things like that. Losing the sensation of the limb, it's not something they would worry about, and it should be, but related to everything they have been through, it stops being an important problem, so they just deal with it. And when we place the system on that entity, we immediately saw that the socket was loose. So he was having a lot of pistoning, which was causing intermittent pressure on that artery and losing the sensation of the limbs. So that was the reason for having to take the prosthetic out every day. So we started adding more socks and testing it again until we saw, okay, you need to be using at the moment for ply sock to be able to have a total contact socket and no pressure on that artery. And immediately he saw visually the difference that made and how much more comfortable it was. So even for someone as experienced, suddenly it made sense how important it was to manage the volume properly throughout the day in order to avoid those complications. And that was a very impressive case for me because I would have thought, okay, this person knows more than anyone how we should be doing it, but it's difficult when you have no information to learn from.
Right. So that is where I think we have a huge impact, and it's really good.
Can you describe? So let's go through what the product is right now there's basically a 3D scanner. Right. So you're scanning the prosthetic, and that prosthetic then goes onto a computer program and an app. Correct. And then you have sensors that you put on the prosthetic, and basically those sensors are collecting the data as the person is using the prosthetic throughout whatever they're doing, playing a sport, going to work, et cetera. And then you're collecting that data and you're analyzing where the pressure points are all across the socket. Is that a correct explanation?
Yeah. So the system has a 3D scanner that digitizes the inside of the socket. So we get the internal shape of your prosthetic socket, and then we have the sensors that we place inside the socket, and that will connect to the wearable that you were on the outside of the socket. That will allow us to gather both pressure and gate activity information in real time. And you can save that information. So we will be able to see the pressures changing in real time as you do different dynamic or static stances in the clinic. Or you can record a certain amount, two to five minutes of gate in the clinic. And in the end, the system will give you your average pressure for each of your gate phases. And this will allow you to see where are the critical points and where you should be working, either on your gate or on your alignment or even on the fitting. Currently, the system can only be used in the clinic, so it's a system to be used in the prosthetic clinic. But we are working in ways of developing our technology further to be something that you can use all day long outside in your normal daily living.
So you get that real data of what is happening for your specific case.
Interesting. So I didn't think of the gate. So, for example, you can analyze a person's gate to see what changes need to be made to the prosthetic, or maybe what exercises that person can be doing to help improve that gate, make it a little bit smoother, put a little bit less pressure on the body. Is that correct?
Yes. So the process is by seeing the pressures in real time during the gate, or the process results. And the good thing about recording it and see the process results is that the process can show it and discuss it with the MPT. You can understand not only the fitting, which is the main purpose of our system, but you can also understand that if the pressure is wrong on a specific part of the gate, it might be a problem on the way you walk and not on the fitting itself. So you can understand and give suggestions to the empty on how we should correct this gate or to have a better support. So that's also another of the benefits. And even on alignment, sometimes you can clearly see that the problem is not the fitting is the alignment of the prosthetic because the pressures are completely towards one side or the other. And you can see that is the alignment that is not correct.
That's fantastic. And again, for people who have not worn a prosthesis or don't wear one, I cannot stress enough how unbelievably important the alignment is of it if something is off. And again, the ability to describe it to the prostitute is not always easy to do. So to have that visual data is tremendously impactful. I'm really interested in trying it. I think it's a phenomenal idea.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And I think that especially if we look at new amputees that just are just getting their first prosthetic, I can't imagine how hard it must be to explain something that you don't even know how it's supposed to feel. Right. So it must be a very challenging process going through all that that is already emotionally and physically painful, but then having to go towards the program pain of actually getting to a good prosthetic. So I think on those cases, it might be really helpful. And in the end, the entity feels much more involved in the process. When our system is being used because you're seeing it, you're being able to discuss it with your prostitute and not just having to trust their word for it. So they are good at their job, but it's important that people feel included and feel like they have a saying in what is happening.
Absolutely. I'm the one wearing it. So my input, the more it's counted and the more it's heard, it makes the whole process much smoother. And I remember even as a kid, it was definitely more difficult to describe what I was feeling, what I was going through. To not have that data made it just a more time consuming, frustrating process. Also, you don't know how comfortable is this socket actually supposed to feel. Am I supposed to be okay with it rubbing here or feeling pressure there? You don't know. But when you have that data now, you have a mutual foundation that both the prosecutor and the patient can talk about and work through. It's phenomenal. Can you give us an estimate so people have an idea? I don't know the answer to this question, either. Approximately how many amputees or people who wear lower limb prosthetics are there in the world.
At the moment? The last number I saw in just North America and Europe, it's 6.5 million PT. It's a lot. And the recent studies show that the number is expected to double by 2050. It's a population that is growing significantly, mostly because of the improvement in healthcare, people with an amputation now live longer. So the population of amputees is growing a lot because of that as well. So that means you have to provide care and follow up to a lot more people. And in places like the US where a lot of the areas are already stressed and they have no way of coping with the number of employees they need to support. It's getting really difficult because you won't have enough new prosthetics coming out to deal with the increasing number of employees.
I've seen that it's getting harder and harder for me at least, to find a good prostitute. And that's something that the whole industry needs to shift to accommodate that demand. So this isn't just more people that this is happening to an older age. I would imagine that more cases of diabetes, certain types of cancer, all of these things are requiring that. That's correct.
Exactly. Yeah. And then those health issues are happening sooner. So people are getting their amputation sooner. So that means they will live with it for longer periods, which means they will need to be supported for a lot more time. So there really needs to be changing the way the system works in order to keep all these people in with a good level of comfort and being able to go back to their normal lives and work and do whatever they need to do in their daily living.
That makes sense, I think. Fred, you have an interesting opportunity. There's not a lot of data collected over time about what impact wearing a prosthetic has over a lifetime on a person's body, how it breaks down the body as you get older. What health problems do people tend to have as they get older, wearing prosthetics for whatever, a decade, two decades, their whole lives. Since you have this data collection already, at least the foundation of it in place, I think it'll be really beneficial to track what happens to our bodies as we wear prosthetics over time. And how can we make them better or adjust them as we get older so that we can continue to enjoy the quality of life for a longer period of time?
Yeah. So one of the things we noticed is exactly that there are very few points of data about amputees. You barely have anything. So we are really focusing on being specialized on that data acquisition, on being able to gather that data through long periods of time, to start understanding whether how things evolved and hopefully with the work is being done by other companies, on giving adjustability and the capability of reacting to different activities or different stimulus for the prosthetic components. If we can merge both those things together, we can create a new way of prosthetic limbs to work where they can react accordingly to your activity, to your fitting throughout the day, because we know that the limb doesn't have the same volume the entire day or throughout the month, and you can't be replacing your socket every month. So there needs to be a better way to do that. So that's something that we feel once we have the data and we start understanding it, we can also do something with that data and create a much better prosthetic link.
Interesting. So that's clearly one of the goals of the company moving forward. Is there anything else that you can talk about that you're working on that you're excited about? Like what's the next stage of development?
Yes. One of the things we are also that we realize that is a big problem in the US is the functionality assessment of an entity to the way you classify. In the US, you use it to care level. But the way of getting to that K level is quite subjective at the moment. It's based on a short amount of time in the clinic, so it doesn't necessarily correspond to the needs of particular individuals. So we've just announced a couple of weeks ago the partnership with models and their StepWatch. And the idea is to build something that will allow you to gather data and understand exactly what are the needs for each individual and classify you based on that. So have a classification of functionality based on one month of data in your real environment instead of 30 minutes in the clinic. Because that way you make sure that each person has the appropriate prosthetic and with the best components they can have. And that is something we are working on at the moment and would really like to figure out in the future.
That's fantastic. There's a lot of potential synergy there. You can team up with some nutritionists maybe as well to show like, okay, what types of food when you're tracking this data, what types of food maybe increase the volume of the leg during the day? What types of food are more anti inflammatory? So like those things, you're more comfortable throughout the day. I also think that if you can start collaborating with some Paralympic athletes, it's always interesting to study the edges. Right. To see what are the most athletic, most fit prosthetic users who are pushing themselves to the limit. What are the prosthetics not doing that they could be doing better?
Yeah. That's something we are aiming to do. And one of the parts of it, it's not only acquiring the data, but if you can join that data, as you said, with a platform that can share it either with a prosthetist or your nutritionist or your physiotherapist on a daily basis, then you create a proactive health care system. Right. You're being seen and your prospect can call you and tell you, look, there is something wrong with your prosthetic. Please let me check what is happening instead of waiting until you have the Blisters and then you go there because you have a problem. If we have the data, we can predict a lot of those problems and fix them before they happen. And that will improve massively the quality of life for amputees as well. And if you expand on that and do it with your physiotherapist, with your nutritionist, suddenly you can set up goals, you can act on a much more controlled manner and start avoiding all these complications that are happening at the moment?
Absolutely. Are you also planning on or thinking about maybe monitoring the prosthetic itself to say, hey, this prosthetic is cracking or this foot looks like it's about to break? You should go in and take care of this before you don't have a prosthesis and you can't work or function because of that.
That's not something we are doing directly, but it's definitely something that we would like to partner with manufacturers of fit or needs or all those components in order to do. Because one of the big concepts, I think it's the interoperability of the prosthetic. So it's how can you make the components of your prosthetic work altogether? Right at the moment, the process gets them to work together, but they pretty much work independently within the same device. But if you could get them to communicate and to have all that information, as you said, you could avoid that the food would break and cause you an injury. You could be sure that the foot is working together with the ankle and together with the knee to have the best movement and the more natural movement possible and using the optimal amount of energy instead of using a huge amount of energy just to walk. So that is one of the big concepts for the future of the prosthetic market, in my opinion, is how can you make all of this work together and react to the activities that you're doing to your current situation and in real time? So you're running the prosthetic and react to be running your climbing stairs, climb stairs just like a normal limb.
Right. That's the ultimate goal is to create something that will work exactly like the regular limb.
Yeah. To feel like it's more an extension of yourself rather than something that you're putting on your body and is just kind of there and hopefully not something you pay attention to. Right. Like, for me, the best case of the prosthesis is I'm not aware of it, but it never feels like my leg.
Exactly. Yeah. And that's exactly the feedback we have is for MP, this best scenario is not to feel the prosthetic, but that shouldn't be all you're aiming to. It should be this needs to be part of me. This needs to be something that I feel fully comfortable and fully in control. And I know that doesn't happen in most of the cases.
Do you have any advice or ideas for how we can encourage younger people to gain an interest in prosthetics or to kind of spark a curiosity there that it seems like a field that has much more potential than we've realized so far. It's going to be just getting bigger. It seems like so much opportunity there to merge technology with health care and well being. Anything that you think we should be doing more?
I think one of the steps is it's creating awareness, like what you're doing here with your podcast. It's creating similar initiatives that not only that are not only reached by the empty population or the prostitute population, but that starts raising interest and raising awareness within the entire population. Because I think one of the issues is that most people are not aware of the problems, are not aware of the situation. And I see that every day, every time we hire someone to come and work at Adaptech, people don't really understand the problem until they actually start working with us and start seeing the impact it has on people's lives. So if there is a way of raising that awareness and for people to start being more conscious of it, people will be much more curious about it, because also there is a lot more innovation going on than what people think. And I think that is really interesting when the possibility of working with that. So I think it's making it a more known field and making it a more open field instead of something that is so contained and so specific for the people that are already in it.
Yeah. Now the raising the awareness. I agree with you. That's a big step. There's so much potential there and there's so much good to be done. I saw a video the other day that one of the companies that has the most advanced animatronics and natural movement in the world is Disney. They've invested incredible amounts of money into making realistic looking robots. Right. For their shows, and now they're trying to experiment with them as stunt double so that people don't get injured making the movies. And I always thought that Hollywood had so much innovation and technology potential there, but they're not sharing it and applying it in those directions. It would be terrific if a company like Disney could come out and actually share some of that technology in the prosthetic world to, I think, much more impactful use.
Yeah, no, I agree. And one company that I think has tried to export something like that was open Bionics. When they did, they start doing their low cost Bionic hands and Bionic limbs and giving them the Iron Man arm or the from the video games or from the movies. And they really caught a lot of attention in the UK because of that, because they were mostly focused on children because they grow so fast. You can give them a full Bionic arm. Right. Because it's very expensive. But with their technology, you could. And by doing that, branding, the exercise of making it a Disney arm or a hero arm, that really brought a lot of attention into their company and into the problem because they were merging those two worlds, the world of movies and the world of cinema, with the prosthetic world. And that was a huge move from their side, and that resulted really well. So, yeah, that may be one of the things that needs to happen, is trying to raise that awareness through video games or through movies, TV shows that can really start showing those problems.
Start telling more stories about people with different disabilities and start showing them as central characters as opposed to the traditional the villain or the person who everybody feels sorry for. Right. We have to get away from all of these old tired stories.
Exactly. Yeah. Completely agree. I met MP do the most incredible things that you never thought possible. So I don't think I think people need to change that mindset. And it's not a population that we need to be sorry about. It's just we should be impressed for it not the other way around. I think that I completely agree with that.
Absolutely. I'm going to make a quick transition and then we're going to go back. But I was going through your bio. I'm just very curious. So you collect vinyl records. So you said in your bio that you're not just into not just into music, not just a music listener, but you collect LPs and vinyls. How did you get into that? And can you talk a little bit about that interest in music? It's something that I'm personally fascinated with, and my business does a lot of that. So I'm curious.
Yeah. I've always enjoyed music a lot since I'm little because my father was always listening to music, either when we were doing our car travel through Europe or when I was playing and he was working in the office since very young. I always liked music a lot, but I have no talent for it. So I don't know how to play any or I understand anything about music. I just really like to listen to it. So I started having CDs very early and collecting them, but then things started to evolve with music and people started having everything digitally. Right. With Spotify and everything else. And the CD kind of lost its purpose because you couldn't even play a CD anymore and be there on your laptop or anything. And I think I really like when the vinyl started popping up again because people that release them have a lot more work into it. They really think about the covers and the looks and the feel of it. It ends up being more of an experience rather than just listening to music. It's a much more complete experience. And that's how I decided to start starting to collect again.
And usually I go for the limited editions or the very special editions, not just the regular black vinyl. I go for things that are really special and really different.
Do you have a nice stereo system at home that you listen to them on?
I have a vinyl player from Project that has a really cool glass plate, which gives it a nice looking to the transparent vinyl and the colored ones. And then I have a normal speaker. I'm not very demanding in terms of that. As I said, I don't understand a lot about music. It's really the whole experience and really enjoying it.
Interesting. Okay. That's interesting. Do you have a favorite genre of music or types that you listen to or you just like all kinds of music?
Yeah. The thing I listen mostly it's alternative rock. It's the gender I like most, but I listen to a bit of everything.
Excellent. Okay. Question for you. What have I missed in this talk so far that you feel is important to talk about?
That's a good question. I think we've talked about pretty much everything. We talked about the system. We talked about the prosthetic market. Next year will be a year where we'll be focusing a lot on the US and hopefully we can make our presence in the US stronger and we can start having our systems in a lot more clinics. So that's something we would really like to see our sales in the US going up and a lot more people having access to our technology. And also, as I said, we are partnering with and looking for partners in the industry because as I said, there is so much technology and if we work together, we can make a lot more happen and a lot faster. So I think it would be good if all these new companies and old companies start being more open and working together because in the end, I think what matters is having the best solution possible for the amputee. So I think that's something we are really looking into. I think that's it I think we've covered everything I would like to talk about.
Perfect. I think I would love to stay in touch and I will do everything that I can to help because I think it's a fantastic technology. The mission of the company is correct. And spending time with you today, that collaborative approach is so important. I think too many companies think about always just protecting their IP or it's cheaper to develop it in house, or we have to protect these secrets when if we can find the right partnerships with the right people, we can collaborate and accelerate everything so much more while still protecting each other enough. Right. There's just more to be gained from synergy, I think, with good partners than there is working in isolation.
Yeah, I completely agree with that. And there are so many things that have already been figured out and that are already very good and people that have the best know how. Why should you be reinventing the wheel again when you can just work with those people and do what you do best and focus on what makes you special or what makes you different? So that couldn't agree more. That should happen a lot more. And luckily we've been finding people that are on that same mindset. So I think the future is looking good at the moment for the market and hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more new things coming on in the next year.
Fantastic. So, Fred, how can people connect with you and learn more about adaptech and reach out with opportunities or just to connect with you? Learn more about you and the company?
Yeah, they can go to our website at www. Tech. Eu or to our social media on Facebook, on Instagram, on LinkedIn. We always respond to everyone so you can reach out to us through the form on our website through chats on social media. You can send us an email to info at tech. You we try to be as available as possible and we have a lot of material on our website for people to read through. We have the case studies there, we have videos, we have webinars so there is a lot that you can learn from and if you have any questions, just feel free to reach out and someone will be in touch and clarify all your help.
Perfect. Well, thank you so much for being here and taking the time. I really appreciate it and I look forward to staying in touch and to having you back on the show to get more updates and hopefully do our part to help you guys make more of an impact here in the US.
Thank you very much for the invite was a pleasure to be here and and looking forward to work together and to have you try our system as well and try to get it to as many people as we can.
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