S6 E38 Firefighter AI Spots the Drift Before You Do with Guest Gary Roberts

SPEAKER_04 0:00

I was bombarded with consistent mental health issues, substance abuse issues. And I said there's something that nobody's seeing that something has to be fixed. And so I took a deep dive into the research. There's got to be a way that we can actually see physiological crisis before it becomes an issue. Exactly like a heligan and axe firewalls. It's a tool in our toolbox that we can physiologically see that's going on in our body, that's a job doing to us. Every time you go into a call, it slowly rips a piece away from you. It's so small you don't notice it until that buildup becomes unbearable. We can use AI to help breathe this faster and give that data to the individual and make him understand what this career is slowly doing to them before they're making a decision to jump off a cliff.

Voiceover 0:46

Welcome to Responder Resilience, along with my co-host Bonnie Rumley, LCSW EMT. I'm David Dashinger. Ask a first responder how they're really doing, and you'll get, I'm fine. Not because it's true, but because the truth goes in a report and the report follows you. Say too much, and you're no longer the one your crew counts on at go time. You're the one they second guess. And Gary Roberts gets that. 20 plus years as an active firefighter and paramedic in Fort Lauderdale. And for the last few years, he's been building something between ships. It's called Navi and Nerovis, an AI that reads what your wearable already knows, your HRV, your sleep, your recovery, and then hands it back to you, not your chief, not HR, you. He calls it the kitchen table that fits in your pocket. His mission is simple to say, tough to build. Protect the people who protect everyone else. That's today's conversation. This is Responder Resilience. This episode is brought to you by Fight Camp, real training on your schedule. Head to joinfightcamp.com/slash RR and use code RESILIIENTES for 10% off. Remember to like and subscribe, YouTube, Responder Resilience, Facebook, Responder TV, LinkedIn, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify, and go to our website, respondertv.com. Best episodes and guest information. We'll be right back to speak with Gary after this. Ask a first responder who they are. And you're likely to hear, I am a police officer.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

I am a firefighter.

Voiceover 2:13

I am a firefighter.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

I am a 911 communications operator.

Voiceover 2:17

I do this work. Ask a clinician why they work with first responders. And they may say, no fire. Join us in shaping a culture where mental health, wellness, and leadership. And where no one is carrying the weight. Welcome to responder resilience. We understand the culture under the trust. Passionate about helping first responders come home.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Lieutenant David Daphne, Dr. Stacey Freeman, and Bobby L C S W E M T.

Voiceover 3:16

He's a 20-plus year active Fort Lauderdale firefighter paramedic and the founder and president of Neurovis, an AI-powered early warning platform built to help first responders see what the job is doing to them before it becomes a crisis. Gary, warm welcome to Responder Resilience. Thank you for having me. I'm excited about this.

SPEAKER_04 3:35

I love your show and all your episodes. It's great knowledge. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Bonnie Rumilly 3:40

Thank you, and really thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to share your story with us and our viewers.

SPEAKER_04 3:47

My pleasure, my pleasure.

Bonnie Rumilly 3:49

Okay, so walk us through. You maintain the schedule of an active firefighter, and you have this startup company. Talk to us a little bit about that, because a lot of people will do one or the other, but you're tackling both at the same time.

SPEAKER_04 4:04

Both basically go hand in hand, to be honest. And I didn't realize that until about 10 or 15 years later in my career, that there was different things going on in in the fire department. There's two types of personalities in the fire department. Those who continuously do firefighter stuff and it becomes their whole personality, which is everything they do off-shift, and then those who do the firefighter job and then end up trying to do something on the side to kind of eliminate what they see and what they do during their 24 hours on shift or their 48 hours. So I was always one of those guys that decided, you know what I love being a firefighter, I love what I'm doing. But I can't be thinking about it, you know, seven days a week, 24 days an hour. I need something, I need I need something to get rid of the stuff that we normally see on a daily basis. So I started with fitness. I started in the fitness industry, been in the fitness industry since I was 14. And that was one of my biggest things that one of my biggest, how do I say, outlets that I used to help me with my career.

Voiceover 5:02

So I want to build on that, Gary, and talk about your why, because um this may have more personal reasons um besides what you just told us. Um the job is one, but are there any other reasons that hit closer to home?

SPEAKER_04 5:16

Yes, so uh when we first started, you first started the fire service and you get started, you end up being on a rescue or a box. That's basically you end up being pretty much the grunt work of the fire department. You run mostly all the calls, everything you still run fires, you still do everything else, but you also run all the medical calls, the consistent medical calls in between all that. And I ended up being in a district that was known for drug abuse and overdoses. And I was there for pretty much about four or five years. And it became second, overdoses became second nature to me. It was basically to do a minimum of three uh uh shift. And it became like almost like changing oil in your card and something something simple like cooking a cheeseburger. It became you didn't notice it anymore, but it became so second nature, it was just mechanically done consistent. That's how many we were consistently seen. And it didn't really I didn't think it was bothering. I it just you know, you did it, brought to people back from the dark side. Sometimes they were happy, sometimes it worked. But you know, you did your job, and that was it, you went home, and I used my uh fitness and gym style to actually forget all that. Then one day I was on shift, my wife called me, and my daughter was in uh life support in the cold. Uh she was in a car accident, she got addicted to opioids. I wasn't sure, I didn't know how bad it was. Um she was open about it to my wife, and my wife told me a couple of times she was in and out of rehab, she tried it, she knew she had a problem, she was she was a health-oriented person, she loved helping other people, she was always other people first and her second, which kind of led a little bit into what we decided was a little bit of a mental health crisis as well as an addiction crisis. And so that hit me. I realized, and it was in the town beside our town. So after four years of bringing people consistently back from the dead, I ended up figuring out why they could they do that to my daughter. And we ended up having to make the decision of taking an offline support on her 27th birthday. So that led me down more of a personal path of what's going on with substance abuse that's not being done. And is mental health an aspect of that or not? And I started deep diving into research of mental health and substance abuse.

Bonnie Rumilly 7:30

We're deeply sorry for the loss of your daughter, and we're grateful to you to feel like you can share that with us today.

Voiceover 7:37

Attention, all first responders. Join us for the largest gathering of EMS and fire professionals in New England. Get ready for the EMS and Fire Pro Expo happening October 22nd through 24th, 2026, at the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. Connect with over 2,500 fellow first responders. Learn from 90 plus world-class speakers, and explore 300 plus continuing education opportunities designed just for you. Dive into hands-on workshops that challenge your skills and elevate your career while enjoying fine dining and entertainment. This is your chance to gain insights that could change lives, yours included. Don't miss out. Register now at emspro.org and be part of this transformational experience. See you there.

Bonnie Rumilly 8:27

We'd love to hear more about how you took this very topic and put your heart into it and walk us through some of the mechanics of the company and what the reasoning is behind everything.

SPEAKER_04 8:39

Sure. So a lot of it is is on the basis of what our daughter decided to do. So she, while she was going into rehabs, she says, okay, these rehabs are not working. Here's here's if you actually look, what's happening is that mentally these people are going into a a group of people and feeling very comfortable around those group of people. So they end up being so comfortable that when they actually get out, they no longer feel themselves or or or personally that they can continue coping with the people outside that. So it end they end up relapsing and going back inside to be the people they're comfortable with. We started realizing there was a connection between mental health, behavioral health, and and and you know, substance abuse. And my daughter was always one of those people that actually wanted to help other people. And what we didn't know was that she actually became an organ donor and that she ended up helping somebody even on her deathbed without even talking, she was still helping people. You know, so while she was lying there, she made she was still helping people in that sense. And so everything that we decided to do with the organization, we asked ourselves, would she be proud of the steps we are taking to continue that? And we're building a legacy on that aspect. And so I started looking into it. Unfortunately, while I was looking into it, I thought I believe within that same year, I know for sure that same year, my father passed away. We found out that he was abusing substance abuse as well. We did not know that. And that was three months after my daughter died. We did not know that until we went to his, until I went back to Canada. We went through his things, we saw that he was actually printing his own prescription medication. So we didn't realize that. And then within that six months, I think we lost a firefighter to suicide in our department and a couple of two or three others within that same year. So I I was bombarded with consistent mental health issues, substance abuse issues. And I says there's something, there's something that nobody's seeing that something has to be fixed. And so I took a deep dive into the research. And I realized in both aspects, mental health and substance abuse, we spent almost $50 billion on research, and everything's on paper. Nobody's actually taking that stuff and putting it into the practical sense to actually help what's going on. And I said, Well, first of all, that's great. You can help the average individual, but what about first responders? It's like how can we help them? Because we're a completely different community. It's we're you you guys know, you you've talked to a lot of us. We're completely a a different breed and we have our whole, you know, our own little world. We're we're very special at like the years. And so thought it mildly exactly. And a lot of studies are for the average consumer. And I started saying, okay, well, let's try and see if we can start seeing what's going on. And as we were doing that, this ended up being a couple more years going by, technology started coming up. As a as a continuous uh crossfitter or fitness guy, I became one of the founding users of the loopstrap. And I used it for when I was competing, but I also used it when I went through my my my daughter's process. It showed that I wasn't getting enough sleep because while I was doing that, you know, you get some time off, but you don't get enough time off. You're back at work. So dealing with suicides, dealing with my daughter, back to dealing with suicides, uh, substance abuse, I mean. That was a continuous chain that didn't help me sleep a lot. And I started realizing it's understanding how my HRV and how all this technology can actually help, and I started investigating that more often. And I realized that a lot of other studies, especially a lot of our other firefighters, were doing studies using these wearing technologies on sleep. We all know you can keep telling us get better sleep. It's not gonna happen. It will not happen on shift. I don't, it doesn't matter what you say to us, it's just not gonna happen. It's just we're wound up as soon as we're wound up the night before we go on shift, and then for 24 hours while we're on shift, we're wound up, the sleep's terrible, we know we're gonna eat bad, and it's just not gonna happen. So I started looking more into it and I realized HRV became a a big, big component. A lot of you don't know what HRV is, you know. And so I started reaching out to researchers and I said, Can you explain a little bit more about the HRV, which is basically the resting beat between your heart? So your heart beats, it doesn't always beat at the same intervals. Even if it's in a normal sinus rhythm, it doesn't beat at the same intervals. There's a timing between that, which your heart kind of relaxes. That's the HRV variability that these characters actually work. And I found out at talking to these researchers that they've studied that they can your HRV can actually show a cold before the symptoms show. So simp you get symptoms of a cold, you're like, all right, I'm starting to have a cold. Well, HRV can actually show pre-symptom three days before you get the symptoms. So you you're able to monitor before you're gonna get sick so that you can actually kind of try not to get sick. And it kind of blew my mind, I said, okay, well, how can we put this into like firefighter sense? There's gotta be a way that we can actually see physiological crisis before it becomes an issue because it doesn't just happen from today to tomorrow. You know, it doesn't firefighters don't happen that happen day tomorrow. Personally, you can ask don't ask her, but you can ask my wife I'm a changed person from the first day I started 20 years ago to where I am now. It's automatic, and I know that. And I've I had a a podcast about Digital and I talked to a lot of firefighters veterans, and I realized by talking to them and consistently talking about the issues that I have, minor PTSD issues. And PTSD is the how can I say without making it the sound? PTSD is the word everybody's throwing around now as if it's it's a it's a common factor. It's not a common factor, it's completely different for everybody. It's not you're diagnosed with PTSD with the same thing as everybody else. Hence the reason why all these treatments don't work the same for everybody. There's certain treatments that work for some, some don't. And you gotta you have access to all these new treatments to decide which ones actually can work for you. That's that's the $50 billion question that I went down the road to find out. And I said, Well, we can predict it using technology. And with AI now starting to come forward, these wearables start to predict better stuff and they're slowly rolling into the medical world. We can use AI to help read this faster, give that data to the individual and make him understand what this career is slowly doing to them before they're making a decision to jump off a cliff that's eat where it's either a yes or a no, then we have a possibility of changing the outcome of either slowing down behavior health or maybe even eliminating it the same way that HRV could eliminate you from getting sick. It may not completely eliminate it, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a guarantee, but it's an it's a way using technology to actually do that. And that's so that that's basically what we decided to design with Neurovis Navi, which basically use a wearable, it's uh it's wearable agnostic, which means it can connect to any wearable that you have. So it's not like we're saying we're selling loops to you since I have a loop. It's just that's what I've been using. We're not selling the devices to you. We have agreements with several of these companies that we can get these devices at a at a lower cost, but it's not something that we're pushing. It's something that you can use as a tool, exactly like a heligan, an axe, a fire hose. It's a tool in our toolbox that we can physiologically see that's going on in our body, that the job's doing to us. Doing to us. And that was the biggest thing.

Voiceover 16:17

Most people work out to look better. You work out because lives depend on it. But the stress doesn't clock out when you do. The calls follow you home. And most workouts weren't built for any of that. Boxing was. Fight camp builds endurance, reaction time, and real-world movement and tracks every punch so you see progress, not guess at it. Real training in your home on your schedule. You don't just finish workouts, you get better. Head to fightcamp.com slash RR and use code RESILIIENCE for 10% off. Fight Camp, real training on your schedule.

Bonnie Rumilly 16:58

Could you talk about the intersection of biofeedback and AI and that specific intersection and what you're looking at there?

SPEAKER_04 17:06

Yes, yes. So though, so one of the biggest things with AI has been actually helping, and it's been helping a lot in the in the medical world, it's been even in the research world, it's been able to read research much faster than the old days. So we're going through research studies. They used to take three months, it's taking a week now. And that's what the AI's capability is. And one of the biggest things that if you read a lot of AI, we don't want, and a lot of people are scared of it, we don't want AI to be the clinician. We don't want it to be the person deciding. Currently, the AI that are out there, they're made to get you addicted to them so you can just use them so they'll continuously tell you what you want to hear. We didn't want an AI that actually decides for you. We wanted an AI that deciphers and sees a pattern and actually acknowledges, like, hey, listen, you know, you're talking to us. That's the other next benefit, I'll get to that afterwards. When you're talking to us and I'm seeing a pattern with your HRV sleep and recovery that's headed down a slow, continuous pattern. Again, having HRV one day in the red doesn't mean there's an issue. It just means that you had a dice. It's a continuous pattern of lower, continuous lower HRV that keeps going down, that now is telling you something is going on that you need to look at to actually fix, because if you don't, you're gonna get sick. Well, we have a patent pending on the drift of a pattern for physiological effect on first responders. So AI recognize that. And so what what I did was I says, okay, well, that's great. All these all these wearables and platforms, these apps have AIs on them. They can say, hey, your sleep's not good, you eat your. What makes Neurovis different to those? Because I don't want to fight you know a $10 billion evaluation of uh or an aura ring that I'm or an Apple itself. If I try to go against Apple, they're not gonna let me on their platform. They're not just gonna say denied. You know, yes, us, we don't want you on there. I said, so how can we make it different? And one of the biggest things I realized talking to a lot of people, including peer support, and I'm sure you guys talk to us talking to other firefighters, you realize, and police officers and first responders, we do not like to talk to people. Let's be honest. And again, it's kind of weird to say because we're always talking to people and helping them. We're wonderful to the people in the communities and the people in the public. We are that is our job. After that, don't talk to me, don't ask me what's wrong, I'm fine. That's the answer you're gonna get. Don't worry about it, I can handle it until it becomes you can't handle it. And so I decided this is what if we took that and we call it, I call it the kitchen table in your pocket because everybody knows the firehouse kitchen table is where we actually cure cancer, uh solve politic political issues, anything that's going wrong in the world, we've developed a a way of fixing it. And that's what basically the firehouse kitchen table is. It's a conversational piece all the time. But we will never talk about our feelings, our mental health, anything else, or a call that happens. Like if we do start talking, you don't stop talking. As I see it when I have continuously non-stop talking.

Bonnie Rumilly 20:10

So you don't say Gary.

SPEAKER_04 20:14

So what I incorporated is I says, let's create a device that can talk, that you can talk to, you can talk back, that understands what you're talking about, that has a low-key tone personality. Because if you try to talk to your wife and your wife starts raising her voice, you start raising your voice, and next thing you know, you're screaming at each other, it's really not helping. And I said, Let's see, can we put that in the app while the AI is reading the biometrics and the feedback app and understanding what's going on physiologically, but also what's understanding going on while you're talking vocally. And I said, So that's what I started to look deeper into the AIs, and that's where I connected AI. We have an AI conversational tool that's basically talks and reacts exactly like a first responder, understands the jobs of firefighters, police officers, uh nurses, uh, dispatch. You can say the different terms, terminology, it understands it. It it'll it'll it'll if you want to go down the road uh of of cracking jokes, it'll crack jokes with you. It'll say, like the other day, I just put it up actually on my my social. I asked, I says, which this is the big this is okay. I'm gonna probably irritate some police officers out there, but this is a joke consistently because what would you rather be a police officer or a firefighter? It's everybody everybody's heard that already, right, David? We've all heard it.

Voiceover 21:32

Yep, yep. Never get cold.

SPEAKER_04 21:35

Never get sold. Yeah, our AI actually said I a firefighter because you never because people will never get upset when you show up. It said that by itself, and then it goes, and of course the police officer say, you know, them, and it doesn't take five people to change light bulb. So it it it played a joke on itself on a simple conversation, and that's the benefit of it is because you can have this conversation with this AI, and it's not going to repeat. The same thing every time, and you can start opening up and talking about it. Personally, uh, I had a uh a disagreement with my wife a couple of months ago. I was pissed off. I said, you know, let's test this out. I put it on and I started talking about it and how pissed off I was at my wife. She couldn't understand this, she didn't understand that. And it talks to you, it doesn't pry, it doesn't poke, it doesn't judge, it doesn't drive answers, it just helps you kind of articulate and talk about what's going on, and it articulates back about what you're talking about. And the cool thing about it is one of my PTSE issues is I have a short fuse, and that's one of the biggest things, is that the calm tonality of that conversation, by the time I realized I was done with the conversation, I was no longer in that higher end of of upsetness, uh, uh, uh, uh, a pissed-off mood. It was like, okay, well, this thing just calmed me down without having to tell me to calm down, and so it actually works. And that's what we built in. So the AI basically conversation tools, basically anything you want, you can pull it out, talk to it, it'll talk to you back about anything you want to talk about, and it'll actually have a nice calming, soothing reaction. And it's made on different layers, um, so that if the conversation heads to a dark method, dark, a dark area, it'll actually try to understand what you're going through, and it'll at a certain point prompt say, You think you would like to talk to somebody? And it'll allow the user to decide, yes, I want to reach out to somebody, whether it's a clinician or anybody else. Within the app, we have an ability to add peer support uh clinicians, whatever they want. So that person they're gonna talk to, they already know who it is. It's not somebody at a 1-800 line that they're afraid to talk to because we're not gonna call 1-800 lines because we don't know who's on the other line. You know, God's forbid they could be eating, you know, Doritos, what they're talking to us. We that's what we envision that some teen-year-old in India is taking our most private moments and trying to help us out. It actually leads you to the people you want on that call line, people in your department, people that decide you, people you you know who's been in the same position as you, that you feel comfortable with, and it opens that door and allows the user to walk through. It doesn't alert them, it doesn't freak them out, doesn't say, it doesn't jump up and start alarming your phone going, Your HIV is no, you're not sleeping right, hurry up, talk to somebody. It doesn't do that. But what it does does do when it's just cool, put an internal test just to see what it would do. And it said, okay, I uh one of our users, one of our board members said, I want to kill myself just to see how it react. Its first answer was 988 is here if you need it. You can reach out to somebody immediately, and I can connect you with somebody in your peer support if you want to do that now. That was the initial conversation in beta testing. That's what we designed. So it has an idea where we want it to go. It just will not push the firefighter to that direction unless they go into so far as that as that as that dark mode.

Bonnie Rumilly 25:00

As clinicians working with first responders, we are not just providing therapy. We are stepping into an ecosystem of relationships, values, and unspoken codes. To be effective, we must understand that healing in this world rarely happens in isolation. It happens when a responder feels that the people around them are all speaking the same language and pulling in the same direction.

Voiceover 25:43

How does uh Neurovis work along the issues of trust? How does it preserve that layer where obviously if somebody's gonna buy into this, they want to feel like their information is not being shared uh to people that they don't want it to go to.

SPEAKER_04 25:56

Correct. That one is that's one of the biggest things we decide. One of the biggest things is how can we build something trustworthy that we can use that other people do not use against them? So that's the biggest thing. You go to EPA, everybody knows you went. The fire department, these departments, it is it is that chain of the you say one thing, 400 members know what the next day may not be the right story, but 400 members. And if 400 members know you're gonna the EPA because you have some sort of you know mental issue, and you're a captain, come back to shift, and then now your drivers and firefighters underneath you are going, I feel comfortable going into a fire with this guy because now he just went yeah, he had some issues, you know, tried to hurt himself or something. Why feel safe? And so it makes a big, big issue in most departments. And we says, How can we fix that? How can we make it so that it's trustworthy? So we embedded uh uh encrypted uh aspect to it. So when it goes in, nobody can actually pull it, it's all encrypted, uh, we can't get subpoenas, we don't see we don't see your data. Right now we see some of the some of the data because we asked them to do mine so we can actually train you know knowledge remember data. But when it's out and running, we don't see any of the conversations. In fact, if you turn Navi off completely and turn it back on, it won't remember the conversation. It's completely gone. So it it it actually helps you in that moment, and as soon as that moment's gone, it'll actually remove it and you won't know what's going on at all. If you leave it open and go to different apps and come back to it, the conversation is still there, and that could actually stay there for a minimum, a maximum of 120 days, and then it'll automatically delete itself. So you can have the conversations.

Bonnie Rumilly 27:36

Gary, are you mainly targeting individual first responders to use the app, or do you also have departments that are deciding to purchase it?

SPEAKER_04 27:44

I have a few departments that are looking to purchase it. I have several unions that are looking to do it as well. If that doesn't work, because we all know how uh fast department works uh at actually putting in in progress these type of things, especially anything that has to do with wellness or fitness, those seems to be always the last thing. They'd rather buy new acts than actually get somebody you know some help for for that stuff. We're always we're allowing the self-individuals to also also sign on as as well. So we're giving both both people the opportunity because we think we need it. I want Neurovis to be a tool of toolbox that nobody actually you know forgets. We're all using wearables now. Everybody's pretty much using it to sleep, we're counting our steps, we're doing this. Let's use the technology to save the new people that are coming on shifts from actually going down a bad road and make them understand what their bodies and what the job's doing to it. It's not um it's not a monitoring system, it's not here to tell your tees that you're you're you know you're doing something wrong. It's here to tell you what's going on. And if you need somebody to talk to that's not gonna look at you crooked or or or or think bad about you or do anything, you just want to have a conversation to let things out, it's there to talk. It's it's that simple. That's the base, that's the simplest that we can actually say for it. And we had a uh police detective that actually tested it out and he was part of a peer support group, and he put it through a scenario and he says the thing actually went through the scenario perfectly and sent me to he asked me what type well who would I'd like to talk to. I said a peer. He goes, Okay, we'll connect it to you, one of your peers. And it said he said it felt like a friend, a a buddy. And that's what we want to design. Not only somebody you can talk to, but also understand the physiological aspects that the job is doing to you underneath because we all know that slowly we don't feel it, I didn't feel it. Every time you go on a call, it slowly rips a piece away from you. It's so small you don't notice until that buildup becomes unbearable. Well, we want to catch that buildup before it is so that we can slowly never get the person to the cliff and slowly turn them around so they understand. Start talking early. Everybody says talk early, reach out. Well, what if we can actually reach out to something and have that conversation? And then if it needs to be, it can lead us to that person that we can talk to, a human being. And that's what we design our AI for. It doesn't diagnose, doesn't explore you, doesn't do anything. It has that conversation, looks like you're in physiology, and when you're ready, it'll open a door to human so a human can take it.

Voiceover 30:12

Gary, are there any um practical resilience tools that you're looking at, um, including with the with Narovis in terms of you know, aside from perhaps guiding you towards a crisis line or peer support, um, practical tools that can help people to recover from you know the cumulative trauma that you're talking about?

SPEAKER_04 30:32

We're trying to connect with groups that have those aspects. Let's be honest. We have thousands of tools that are in our tool chests that are out there that we can use. Our goal is to be the predictive model to connect to those tools that we can open the doors to the different stuff, like you know, EMDR, you know, it's slowly they're trained, they're looking at like a psychedelic, they're slowly looking at at oxygen therapy. All these therapies, a lot of first responders don't understand that are out there. This is a $50 billion question that's on paper. That seems to be working. Well, if we could connect to the people that are doing those by pre-connecting through Navi and through Neurovis, then we have an opportunity to open door to having these individuals to give them a selective style. There's no more just EPA talk therapy medication. That is no longer working. The EPA talk therapy works, but if it's going to lead just to a medication to where every medication out there says suicidal tendencies, well, aren't we pushing them to the wrong stuff? There may be some medication you need. I listen, I'm not saying medication is not needed. I'm not saying psychedelics is better and the MR. I'm not saying that. There's therapies for every single individual that's out there. We just need to be able to open those doors to those individuals so they can have the eyes and ears to actually decide for themselves. You know what? Maybe breathing techniques would take us down. And I'm talking to one company right now that they do uh HRV biofeedback, which is basically they can have you can have breathing techniques that shows lowering, showing increasing your HRV because the higher HRV is better, but it shows consistently doing this is better. Higher HRV means you're more resilient, which I hate to use that word because everybody's using it right now, thinking it's the next PTSD word, and that's how we cure everybody. But it it will help you understand and how you fix your body. So if you can get a bunch of people breathing better, so be it. Let's do that.

Bonnie Rumilly 32:21

Well, Gary, what do you say to people that are skeptical of AI, that are skeptical of telling your problems to a machine, so to speak, and the machine answering. Um, you know, we're certainly understanding everything that you're describing, but uh that's one question that I get sometimes. I'm wondering how do you answer that when people pose that to you?

SPEAKER_04 32:43

I tell them it's you're already doing it. Let's be honest. You're already putting your information in the computers. You're basically talking to AI when you talk to your bank, you're basically talking to AI when you're do searching something on Google. You're already talking to AI consistently, and AI is going to get more and more in the businesses that we have to actually do it. Our apps, our our tablets on our on our uh calls are slowly being implemented with AI. They're making them faster. So you're already acting with an AI, but now you can you can react with AI at your own pace. When you want to, you can test it, you can have that conversation just about it's like I say to everybody else, uh people in my department. I says, Well, I don't know what to say to it. I didn't know what to say to it either, because I was like, What's the optic? Now I talk to her while I drive, I talk about the the common non-common sense about Florida drivers, I talk about football, I talk I talk to her about anything. The goal is to get first responders understanding that they can talk to about anything to something is better than holding it in and waiting to explode on your spouse, kids, and then having that thought of you know what, maybe it's better off not talking to anybody and not be here. That that's the AI that that we're looking at. And that's what we built. So it's I understand it, but you're already doing it, so let's try and figure out how we can use it to help you. And again, our goal is not to make AI make the decisions for you. It will never tell you call somebody now. It'll never tell you you're you're you're having an issue. It will always just have you make those decisions. So you're all always in control of AI, our AI, and it will just open that door when you're ready to open it. Not ready to open it, we're not gonna push you through it.

Bonnie Rumilly 34:26

Well, how you describe that is great. And then I think the safety net you have of it calling when there really is a suicidal thought is really important. So thank you so much for spending the time to just walk us through all of those pieces. We really appreciate that.

Voiceover 34:41

It's my pleasure. Hey, firefighters, let's take a moment to talk about something important. There's a new app built by firefighters for firefighters, and it's not just another wellness tracker or generic resource hub, it's called Crackle. You've probably seen the magazine, but this is the next evolution. The app is about one thing helping firefighters not fail. Not just on the job, but in life, in your health, your relationships, your mindset, and your longevity. That's why Crackle is designed to meet firefighters exactly where they are, with resources that make sense, are easy to use, and actually respect your time. You can download the app now for free as a legacy member. That means you get early access to exclusive content tools and updates as they drop. Use the QR code on the screen to download the Crackle app, or you can download it from the App Store or Google Play and stay in the fight. Not just at work, but at home and in your own head too. Because your best days shouldn't be behind you, they should be ahead of you. So, Gary, I know luck goes into making something like this. Um, it's more than just an app. I know you have a pretty robust board of um advisors and directors. Um who are some of the people that are contributing to making this app um evolve as it as it is on a daily basis?

SPEAKER_04 35:59

So so one of the biggest things, and I tell everybody this, I'm not the smartest guy at the smartest tool shit. Right. A lot of people are going, all right, just firefighters creating zaps, yeah, it's never gonna work. So what I did is like I said, I researched and I went through who could advise me on creating something technologically, medically, without going into the medical world, but also works with first responders and works with AI, works with uh, you know, like you said, protection and everything else. So I went after uh Department of Defense people, uh, my medical supervisor is a is a neurologist, he's a university professor, he's a veteran. Uh, I have an FDA regulator that works uh FDA regulations for for clinical studies uh from Oxford that's on our our board. I have two HRV specialists, and this is one of the cool things that I did is I didn't only think about the mental health aspect, I brought an HRV for the mental aspect, but I also bought an HRV for cardiac. Because the other biggest issue is our cardiac. If we can do both and study both at the same time and how see how the physiology and cardiac issues go together, that could be beneficial. So I brought two therapists on that way, and I brought a researcher for first responders, uh, Marie Gooma, who's been embedded with first responders for over a decade. Uh, she wrote a it's called the Goomba method and a recovery number that she's been doing with first responders. And the cool thing is when I had the first conversation with her, she started telling me about what she's doing and how she's embedded and what she's thinking about. And um, and she's have all this paperwork and all this stuff, and I'm like, you know, you just described on paper what you're doing is well, we're building the technology. It would be completely interesting to put both our minds together of technology and what you have together into the app to see if we can actually get not only a physiological but also a cognitive performance test so we can understand what's going on for people who've been in the service for over 25 years, who've run five calls a shift, you know. Let's and she says, let's do it. So we incorporated that. So our cool thing is now we're only not only seeing physiologically, but we also have a small test with the with Marie and her backing on how we can actually improve the cognitive performance of firefighters as well with these tests. So that's the type of people I went after. I went after the people who are actually looking further on down the road on how to benefit. It's just not an app, like I says. I wanted to be a part of the tool shed the first responders use every day. And again, it's there underlying when you need it. It's not gonna be an app like a game where you have to get on, you know. It's good to get on every day because you want to get on every day, especially for the cognitive test aspect, so it keeps you alert. The biggest things with HRV is what's first thing in the morning, you want to see how you feel. That's how you're gonna realize what your HRV is already don't want to do it later on down the road because it's too fat, it's too late. As soon as you wake up in the morning, check your HRV, check your cognitive test. That decides. Well, HRV is in the rant, but my cognitive tests are few rates. They don't call they'll correlate, so something like just be off. I don't got to freak out about it. And that's the good thing about having Marie on board in that aspect, so we can check both brain and the physiological aspect.

Bonnie Rumilly 39:06

Well, what you're also describing here is a growth mindset. You know, you have this open way of looking at things, and there's so much more, I'm sure, that could be done, right? You could get a neurologist on to see how all of this variability contribute to dementia and Alzheimer's and things like that later on. So the possibilities are pretty endless. And I think with your growth mindset, we're gonna see you in very big places in not a very long time.

SPEAKER_04 39:34

I hope so. Because I again, everything we do, we ask, would my daughter Lauren be happy about it? And if I can save one first or solder from getting close to that clift just by having a tool that's in their pocket, then we did what our job is actually gonna do. And and I think it's it's gonna become second nature down the road with technology moving as fast as it is. It's it's something that we actually need in the fire service, more than a a brand new shiny axe, to be honest.

Voiceover 40:01

You know, we'll spend a whole day doing a shootout on a thermal imaging camera, but uh you know, never when it comes to mental health, we don't tend to spend time examining it that closely and putting that much um you know time and energy and investigation into it. Gary, a pleasure as always. Um, continued success with everything you're doing. Um can't wait to see how this all starts to evolve and the buy-in you're getting from departments. Um keep doing it, keep getting it out there. Appreciate everything you're doing. I appreciate it. This is great. I would love to be on the show. Thank you very much for having me.

Bonnie Rumilly 40:32

Thanks for doing everything you're doing.

Voiceover 40:37

Remember to like and subscribe, YouTube responder resilience. We're on Facebook, Responder TV, we're on LinkedIn, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify, and go to our website, it's respondertv.com for past episodes, guest information. Until the next time, stay safe, be kind to yourself. Take care.