#122: Dom Raban (Xploro)

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:00:00]:

So he's playing this game. And she said the next day he went into hospital for his fourth round of chemotherapy. And she said that he said to the nurse that he finally got why he was having chemotherapy. And that's all because he got 300 points in a power up for capturing a bag of chemotherapy in that game. And she said there was a lightness about him that she hadn't seen before in all of his treatment. So just the act of playing that single game had changed his attitude towards this really invasive and really unpleasant treatment, which I think for me just completely speaks to the power of games and Gamification

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:42]:

let's discover what people are building in the greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs, builders and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host Jeffrey Stern and today I had the real pleasure of speaking with Dom Rabin, the founder and CEO of Xploro. While originally founded in the UK, Xploro has recently established its headquarters here in Cleveland, accompanying closing on over $1.7 million in funding. In a round led by local investors including Comeback Capital, University, Hospitals Ventures and Jumpstart Ventures. Xploro is an award winning land clinically validated health information platform that uses augmented reality gameplay and artificial intelligence to deliver health information to young patients in a way that makes them feel empowered, engaged and informed, whilst having fun at the same time. By putting health information in the hands of children using language that the understand and interaction paradigms that they are familiar with, Xploro aims to reduce their stress and their anxiety and improve their clinical outcomes, all while improving child health literacy. Dom founded Xploro when he realized that the provisioning of information preparing children for hospitalization is quite poor. When his daughter at the age of 13 was diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma and had to navigate this whole process, fortunately she is now cancer free. But when she was ill, nobody had told her what to expect which made her feel scared, anxious and alone. And Dom honed in on this problem and that it is not unique to their experience. Land so the founded Xploro to provide children with the information that they need land they deserve. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dom as we explore his commitment to user centric design, the power of Gamification, the transformative implications of Xploro and his broader vision beyond pediatric cancer to build a health information platform for any patient of any age with any condition. I hope you all enjoy it as well after a brief message from our sponsor. Lay of the Land is brought to you by Air CFO whose story we actually shared back on episode 23 of Lay of the Land with Air CFO's founder and CEO Justin McLaughlin. For many founders dealing with finances and taxes is stressful, confusing and time consuming. Yet without paying proper attention to your finances and taxes, you won't be able to produce accurate nor timely financials and forecasts for your team or for your investors. And even worse, if you miss critical tax deadlines, you'll get hit with unnecessary penalties from the IRS. These kinds of financial and tax missteps can jeopardize your entire startup and your vision. Running a startup is hard enough. Work with Air CFO and you'll get best in class finance, accounting, HR and tax support. Air CFO takes care of your back office so you can focus on growing from startup to scale up as a layoftheland listener. Visit Aircfo.com for more information and to set up a call and tell them layoftheland sent you. Again. That's aircfo.com. The link will be in the show notes

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:17]:

So, a frequently recurring topic of conversation surrounding the Cleveland Land northeast Ohio entrepreneurship world, I'll call it, is that we need to recruit companies to the area and it branches off from there to address talent, retention, capital and all these other factors that affect the situation. Land I've been really excited for this conversation because we don't have to think about this problem in the hypothetical because this is precisely what you've done and you've established Xploro's headquarters here in Cleveland, among many reasons. I'm excited to talk to you, but looking forward to unpacking that whole motivation and the work you're doing at large. So thank you for joining us.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:04:59]:

Dom yeah, no, thanks very much for having me, and I'm excited to talk about it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:04]:

So I know you have a passion for creating stuff, and as we make our way to Xploro, I'd love to just hear a little bit about where that passion comes from and how it's manifested in entrepreneurship over time.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:05:18]:

So I've been creating stuff for a very, very long time. I actually started off as a teenager creating fanzines music magazines in the late 1970s. So I'm an old guy and I embarked on a career in design. I set up my first design company back in the mid 80s, initially as a one man band outfit, and then went on to run a number of different design and digital agencies working for customers like MTV, land some of the big broadcasters and lots of arts organizations and record labels and that kind of thing. I've been kind of making things, creating things, designing things for, I guess, nearly 40 odd years. So, yeah, a long land varied career.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:18]:

Well, I know there's quite a personal impetus for Xploro's creation. Land through this context of your passion for creating stuff, can you just take us through your journey there? Land what the motivations for Xploro are?

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:06:36]:

Yeah, so back in 2011, so what? Twelve years ago now, I had to deal with the news that my daughter, who was 13 at the time, had been diagnosed with cancer. And I'll just say really quickly, she's eleven years cancer free. She's doing great. But that news at that time, as I'm sure you and anyone listening to this can imagine, was absolutely devastating. She went through a horrendous year of treatment. She was treated at six different hospitals in total, both in the United States and in the UK. And the clinical outcome of that treatment was really, really good. But it was clear that what was missing from her experience was information. So she had no prior information about any of the people she would meet. Really confusing when you go into a hospital. Land you're suddenly surrounded by all of these physicians and you've got no idea who they are or what they do. She had no information about any of the environments she was going into. So, for instance, she had proton beam therapy in Jacksonville in Florida, which involved us traveling 4000 miles from the UK to Florida. But she had no idea A, what proton beam therapy was, or B, what that environment would be like when she got there. So that lack of information had a real impact on her. It made her really scared, really anxious about what was happening. It made her very resistant to treatments because she didn't know what their purpose was. Land that unfamiliarity of those environments just served to increase her levels of anxiety. Land it was obvious that she was suffering because of that lack of information. And whenever there was any information, which was very seldom, it wasn't age appropriate and it wasn't directed at her. So we would find that physicians would be talking to my wife and I about my 13 year old daughter who was standing there off to the side, and it's her who's got cancer, and yet no one is talking to her about her condition and what she's going through. So when she got the all clear, I kind of started thinking about this lack of information and the impact it had on her and realized that that's not going to be limited to my daughter. That's something that not just children experience when they come into hospital, but adults as well. Generally, hospitals are pretty crap at telling patients what's going to happen. And so I got really interested in the idea that information in and of itself can be a bona fide therapy. And I started doing lots of death based research, trawling through Google Scholar, trying to see what research evidence there was around that. And I discovered that there's lots and lots of research evidence, and it's common sense, but there's research evidence that says provide patients with information prior to an intervention and they experience reduced anxiety and that can lead to better clinical outcomes and better long term engagement with health services. So I thought, right, okay, so we've got to do something about providing patients with information. And it wasn't just about providing patients with information, it was about providing age appropriate information. So we started thinking about how do we make information attractive to children of my daughter's age when they're coming into hospital. The way we went about answering that question was we invited some children into our agency and we gave them a week long work placement and we said, right, during this week, we want you to think about what you would like if you were coming into hospital. And to a T, they all came up with game ideas, so it was obvious that we were going to do something based around based around gamelike interactions. So that's really how Xploro came about. That was the original kind of impetus for it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:47]:

I do love how sensical and intuitive your approach to addressing this problem is. And definitely we'll talk about involving those affected by the problem as part of the solution, because it's such a formative point there. But as you were doing the research to understand why things are the way they are today, to me, it's kind of wild that in a world with such information abundance, that the provision of information preparing children for hospitalization would be so bad. So what did you find or understand about what is preventing the current system from adequately offering a solution here that makes this kind of sensical sense?

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:11:36]:

I think there's a couple of things there. Certainly in the UK, but also in the US, physicians tend to focus on curing diseases or treating diseases, rather than thinking about the patient's needs. You go to med school, there's virtually no training on how to talk to land, interact with patients. It's all about use this medicine, use this procedure, do this, do that. But it's not about how to interact with patients. So that's something that's missing. And I think there's a nuanced difference in that between the way we treat patients in the UK and the way patients are treated in the US. I think in the US, you have slightly more emphasis on patient experience and patient engagement than we do here. But it's still the information that is generally provided by hospitals, even in the US, tends to be poor. And that's because I think very often I really hope you haven't got a massive audience of physicians listening, because I'm just about to insult all of them. But they're not necessarily the best place people to design information solutions. And a lot of the interventions I've seen in this space have been led by physicians. And whilst their input is incredibly important to make sure that the information you deliver is accurate, when it comes to thinking about interaction design, about how you engage users in playing with information, in absorbing information, that's a designer's job, really, not a physician's job, right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:27]:

There are different toolkits that you're working from. Let's talk about that. One of the long held design best practices is you take this user centric approach, land, you talk to the people whose problem you are working to address and to solve. Typically, you pull together somewhat of an expert advisory board, a customer advisory board. In this context, you talk to children all the time. Take us through that process, the learnings land we'll get to the gamification piece here.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:14:04]:

Yeah. Okay. As I mentioned before, the very first thing we did was invite school kids into our studio. The next thing we did once we got some initial input from those children was to build some prototypes based on their ideas. We then took those prototypes into a hospital setting and tested them with patients, parents and physicians and got really positive feedback on that. The whole point of this is about doing things iteratively and about build, test, build, test, build, test all the time and always test with the end users. So we did things like we would in the early stages of development. We did some lab based testing where you watch users through a one way mirror so that they're unaware of you there observing them, but you can observe how they're interacting with the platform. You can identify any problem areas. We did lots of questionnaire based research with users, with children, and the in. I think 2018, we formed our expert advisory board, which is our own group of children. The youngest is eight, the oldest is 16. Land since 2018, they've kind of been in control of what we build and how we build it. There have been features which we've spent a very long time designing that they've ended up saying, no, that can't go in the app because it's rubbish. And we've listened to them, and so they're not in the app. And there are other features which are in the app which they've designed, or co designed at least. And they essentially are our guarantee that what we build is age appropriate and fitting for the population we're trying to serve. And one of the really interesting things about the makeup of that group is that we've got roughly 50% of the group are what I would call hospital experts. So they've been through treatment for various diseases and conditions. Land they kind of know everything about every procedure. The other half of the group have never been into hospital for anything at all. So the are, in fact, probably closer to our ideal target user because what we're trying to do is reduce anxiety for those kids that are unfamiliar with hospital environments. So across the spread of the group, we get a really good balance of opinions.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:40]:

So as you're building and iterating and building and iterating land garnering this feedback, at what point do you pulling in this this idea of an MVP, right? How do you know that this is the requisite amount of information that you need to be offering and that you know there might be something here? What what do you feel was the first big break through this whole iterative process?

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:17:03]:

Yeah, okay. So I think you're absolutely right. You can go on building and iterating forever. Forever. And ever and polishing and just land never getting to the point where you've got a product ready for release. So I think the point at which you can confidently say you've got an MVP is when what you've built is beginning to address the problem that you set out to address. So the problem that we set out to address was reducing anxiety for kids coming into hospital. And the point at which we had our first MVP was when we had something that was of a build quality and readiness so that it could be put in front of children and we could measure whether it was reducing anxiety or not.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:48]:

So having reached a baseline product where you feel you are beginning to address the problem, and then layering on top of that the broader vision you have, what is the path that you see for Xploro from there as you begin to layer on augmented reality? Avatars Gamification all these learnings from the conversations that you're having?

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:18:10]:

Yeah, I guess probably the easiest way to start answering that question is to talk about our long term goal and work back from there. So our long term goal is to build a health education platform for any patient, any condition, anywhere in the world. So that's a lofty ambition. That's a hell of a lot of content, but that's where we're going. That's the journey we're on. Land when we released our first MVP, where we were was we were able to talk to a narrowly defined group of patients. So basically, kids with cancer. And we could measure whether what we had built for those kids with cancer was reducing their anxiety. So where we are now is we've embarked on that journey to any patient, any age, any condition. Land we're continually building in now new features and new aspects to the platform that build us out into other disease areas, other age groups, and other territories as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:18]:

So I'd love to talk about the actual dynamics of what this looks like in practice and maybe as a way for us to get to those points, just kind of take us through what this experience for a patient and maybe also for a clinician looks like. From soup to nuts, someone comes into the health system, what can they expect to experience?

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:19:44]:

Yeah, well, let's talk about it from a patient perspective first. Land then I'll talk briefly about the physician experience. So from a patient's perspective, they download Xploro from an App Store. Like any other app they might download from the App Store. It's very important that and this is a little bit of an aside to the patient experience, but it's very important that they think of Xploro as being like any other game or high quality app that they might download, not as being a piece of hospital information. I often describe it as being somewhere between Pokemon Go and The Sims in terms of the experience. So they download the app from the App Store. They use it on their own device, so they don't need any special hardware. It's not a VR application. They don't need a headset. The download it to their own device, and then they start using it. And the first thing they do is create and customize an avatar that the becomes their guide through their healthcare journey. We're really super conscious about diversity and inclusion. So that avatar starts with no gender or racial alignment. It's up to the child to add those characteristics. So they customize the avatar. They build up the avatar into a being that they identify with, and then they give that avatar a name. They can't give it a free text name because we use the avatar in multiplayer gaming, so there's no personally identifiable information. But they give the avatar a name, and it's usually a funny name, like Johnny Bendyfingers or something like that. It's a funny second name. Land, a fairly standard first name, is the format. So they give the avatar a name. They can then see the avatar in augmented reality, so that helps the avatar feel real to them. And then once they've done that, they've kind of set up their avatar and they go into the main body of the App. And the avatar will then introduce them to things like hospital environments, to various interactives that explain scary or complex procedures. The avatar can also answer any questions that they might have because it's an artificially intelligent chat bot, and they have a diary which enables them to take control of their day and understand what's going on. So everything kind of centers around the avatar, but there are all these other different mechanics for delivering playful information. So things like experiencing what an MRI scan is like, or understanding how blood cancers are treated, whole range of stuff, but delivered in a very, very playful and engaging way. And the from a physician's perspective, what they see is data. So they have a management system. They can see how the App is being used by patients, how long they're spending in each area. For example, we've got a research study going on at the moment where they're measuring how long a patient is looking at certain pieces of content within Xploro and then measuring their levels of anxiety. So they're treating our digital content as dosage data in much the same way as a physician in a study might look at how many pills someone's had and then the effect that produces, which is a really fascinating departure for us to be looking at data in that way.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:09]:

I think we'll hone in on the child's experience first here, and I want to talk about this power of games and the gaming dynamic. I've always been really interested in how societally we seem to somewhat underestimate the power of games or dismiss them as somewhat trivial or wasted time. And I just know from my own experience growing up with games, how much I've learned from them. They were reformative. They were powerful platforms for me to learn about things. And they really grasp your attention in a way that few other things can. Land it's the not often so spoken of truth that gaming is bigger than music and movies in this world. What have you observed in Gamifying, the experience here? What is the value that you can unlock with gaming dynamics that you couldn't otherwise?

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:24:05]:

So I'm going to answer that first by relaying a message we have from a parent. Because for me, this message absolutely encapsulates the power of games to change behaviors and change perceptions. So we got a message from a parent a few months ago. Now. She sent this message and she said that her child, who was halfway through treatment for osteosarcoma, which is a bone cancer, so he's halfway through treatment for bone cancer. He plays a game on Xploro. It's a game that we call Plasma Patrol. And in the game, you're running down a hospital corridor, you jump in a spaceship, spaceship takes off. You land in the bloodstream. And then you have to catch cancer cells. And then you get power ups if you capture bags of chemotherapy or vitamins or iron. And you have to avoid white blood cells and fat cells and pathogens and dead cells and various other things.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:07]:

It's like osmosis.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:25:08]:

Jones yeah. So he's playing this game, and she said the next day he went into hospital for his fourth round of chemotherapy. And she said that he said to the nurse that he finally got why he was having chemotherapy. And that's all because he got 300 points in a power up for capturing a bag of chemotherapy in that game. And she said there was a lightness about him that she hadn't seen before in all of his treatment. So just the act of playing that single game had changed his attitude towards this really invasive land really unpleasant treatment, which I think for me just completely speaks to the power of games and gamification.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:53]:

Yeah, that's fantastic. It's powerful.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:25:56]:

Yeah, totally. We got that message, and I have to say, I didn't have dry eyes when I read it. Land neither did the rest of the team. It was really moving to hear that the work you're doing has produces an.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:11]:

Effect like that layering on the physician, the clinician experience. On top of that, how do you think about trying to quantify what that obviously important experience is for a child of beginning to understand it, feeling more comfortable with what is actually happening to them from the clinician's perspective and from a data perspective.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:26:36]:

Well, so the very first thing we did was it's all very well to say we reduce anxiety, but without research, how can we prove it? So the very first thing we did when we had our first MVP was engage with our research partners, who did a research study over here. In the UK with 80 kids. And they found that the kids using Xploro demonstrated a statistically significant reduction in procedural anxiety as well as statistically significant increases in patient satisfaction and knowledge about procedures. As a first study, that was real gold dust for us because it proved that we reduce anxiety. The problem from a physician's perspective, for anything to be purchased and used by a hospital, the first consideration is will it save the hospital money? And it's very difficult to equate a reduction in anxiety directly with a cost saving. And if you talk to physicians about that, the will be really excited about the thought of reducing anxiety in their patients, but they won't know how they're going to get that through the procurement department because the procurement department are going to want to see a cost saving. And that's the same whether you're in the US. Or the UK or anywhere else in the world, rightly or wrongly. So what we've been doing over the last two or three years is looking at ways in which we can prove out not just that reduction in anxiety for the patients, but the health economic benefits for the provider. So we've got a couple of studies going on in the US at the moment, one where we're looking at procedural efficiency in the radiology department. So I'll give you an example. So I don't know if you've ever had an MRI scan. Sure, right. Yeah. But it's a big, scary piece of equipment, makes a horrible noise, and about 20% of people, not just kids, but about 20% of people move the first time they have that MRI scan because they've got no idea what's going to happen. And then when those big bangs start up, you move because you're scared. So what they're doing in this study is the assumption is that by using Xploro to prepare kids for MRI scans, we can reduce the number of repeat procedures because if you move, that procedure has to be repeated. And the initial data back from that study is showing that that is having the desired effect. So that's really, really exciting. We've got another study over also in the States, where we're looking at the ability of Xploro to reduce the need for pre surgical sedation. And again, the initial data back from that study is really positive. So when those studies are published, if we can demonstrate reduction in repeat procedures, reduction in need for sedation, we've got two really important health economic data points that show that Xploro not only makes the patient less anxious, but also results in cost savings for the provider.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:51]:

It's all really fascinating. There are a few more specific items I want to touch on, one of which is as you're building the business of Xploro, at some point we'll the in Cleveland here business. From a business perspective, it made sense to move the company to Cleveland land. I'd love to understand the reasoning for that.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:30:14]:

Yeah, we haven't actually explicitly said this, but I'm guessing your listeners have guessed that I'm from the UK just by my accent. So I guess the first thing I'll talk about is why we're focusing on the states, and then I'll talk about why we've honed in on Northeast Ohio as a place to be headquartered. So when I started out on this journey, I knew that we could never make a successful business out of Xploro just by selling Xploro into the UK's national health system. And the reason for that is twofold, really. One, the NHS national health system here is, I would say, probably the hardest health system in the world to launch an innovative idea. And just to put that in context, I'll give you a data point here. So the average time from introduction of an innovation into the NHS for it to become part of the doctor's workflow is jeffrey, take a guess. How long do you think it's going.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:23]:

To be an upsettingly large number? Three years.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:31:27]:

Okay. 17 years.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:29]:

Oh my God.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:31:31]:

17 years. Until recently, the NHS was the world's biggest user of fax machines. So that says a lot about the NHS and innovation. Okay, so really difficult system to sell into. So I knew right from the start that we had to look at the US market. And also I had that connection with US healthcare through my daughter's treatment in Jacksonville in Florida. Back in 2020, we were lucky enough to be the only company outside of the US. To be accepted onto an accelerator program run by Children's Hospital of Los Angeles called Kids X. And that was transformational for us. It did exactly what an accelerator is supposed to do. It accelerated our route into the US market. So it got us our first US customers. I, through that program, realized that coming to the US is coming to 50 different countries, not one. I began to realize just how complex it was going to be, but it got us over that hurdle of actually entering the US market. And then fairly early on in that journey, I think it was April 2021, I was introduced to someone at University Hospitals Cleveland, a really amazing guy called Brian Rothstein, who's part of the Ventures team at University Hospitals Cleveland. And we started talking about Xploro and how it might be used in their institution. And that led to us having discussions about codeveloping, some content, and through that got introduced to their head of anesthesia again, a really amazing person called Dr. Anne Stormwork. Land we started talking about building a game for Xploro that would explain an end to end sedation encounter. And we're very close to finishing that game now. So I was building this relationship with University Hospitals Cleveland, and then we started having investment discussions. Land they've ended up investing in us, but they also introduced us to some other Northeast Ohio investors. So jumpstart comeback. Capital being two of them. Land. They've both invested too. So one of the reasons well, two of the reasons for coming to Northeast Ohio were money and being close to one of our favorite customers, university hospitals, Cleveland. But the as I got to know more about Ohio generally, I realized that actually, it's one of the best places in the country that we could be to serve our core market, which is children's hospitals. So in Ohio, you've got two of the top ten children's hospitals nationwide, land, Cincinnati, and then you've got other really world class children's hospitals in the state as well. Dayton. Akron. Rainbow babies. Part of the, uh, system. Cleveland Clinic's got its own children's hospital, and it's just a great center for healthcare. And then the other good thing I sound like I should be working for the Ohio Inward Investment Agency, but I'm not. The other thing that's really, really good with being in Ohio is it actually puts us in fairly close proximity to a lot of our other customers. So we've got customers in Chicago, in Boston, in Toronto, and down on the East Coast as well. So it's a good center to get to all of those places.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:08]:

Yeah, well, we're very excited to have you here. I think it speaks to the assets of the region, I think, very eloquently.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:35:17]:

Yeah. And then there are other things like less expensive labor force, less expensive office space, all of those kind of things that they weren't the reasons we chose Cleveland, but they help.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:31]:

So you had mentioned earlier a greater vision, the longer term vision of a health information platform at large outside the scope of pediatric cancer. And I really love the whole focus through the lens of health literacy at large, because as a patient, sometimes it's an obvious problem. You rarely understand the context around whatever it is you're going into to see a doctor for what is the path to the larger health information platform that you're working towards here, and what is the ultimate impact that you're hoping to have through that in retrospect?

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:36:17]:

Yeah. Okay. So the path is where we are now, and we've already embarked on that path. So we're not just kids with cancer. Where we are now is we're still very much focused on children, primarily children aged between seven, land 16, 1516. But we've started to build content for new disease areas, land treatments. So now we're starting with cancer. Now we've got a load of content around radiology, we've got a load of content around sedation, we've got a load of content around surgery. We're starting to look at content around asthma and diabetes and sleep therapy as well is another area that we're looking into. So we're already beginning to build out that content. But if we want to get to be that health information platform for any patient, any age, any condition, that's a massive content development task. And we would be building content for the decades to come to reach that goal. So one of the things that we're doing is looking at opening up our platform to third party developers so that we can incorporate content from other developers, so other games, other interactive content, and we're already having some conversations in that area. And then the next thing we're doing, we're doing a project in the UK, which will be the start of our road to an adult version, where we're doing a user experience consultation with some late adolescents and young adults to understand their reactions to the current Xploro application. We want to know if it's age appropriate for them. Land if not, what we need to change to make it age appropriate. So out of that exercise, by the fall of this year, we'll start to have an idea of where we need to go with the look and feel of the adult version. The underlying technology won't need to change at all, but the user interface may do.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:20]:

So speaking to the underlying technology, there's this confluence here of what feel like all the modern breakthroughs in AI, in augmented reality, in Gamification, in Avatars, and the confluence of these things. What you're working on now probably wouldn't have been possible ten years ago. And you mentioned some specific feedback you've received already from folks and how this has positively affected them. But what more generally has been the feedback from this really technologically forward approach to solving this problem. Has there been any resistance? Are people comfortable with the confluence of all these technologies in one?

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:39:03]:

Well, you've got to first of all, remember that the majority of our users are kids age between, say, seven and 15. This technology is not new technology to them. This technology is the technology of the day. So they're completely familiar with it. They don't see it as a new experimentation in the way that someone more mature, should I say, might be resistant and might think it's some kind of newfangled thing. But it's not to a child. It's just the way things work. Land so I don't think we certainly don't receive any resistance from our users. We do sometimes get some resistance from some people in some of our potential customer organizations where they think it's somehow experimental. But I try not talk too much to them, at least about the technology. It's about the effect. So we're using technology as a means to an end. We're not using augmented reality and artificial intelligence because they're the latest tech buzzwords. We're using it because it produces a reduction in anxiety. In children. That's the most important thing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:23]:

What are the things that you feel are the biggest barriers that you'll have to overcome when you think about what comes next?

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:40:32]:

I've mentioned a couple already. So we've got a big content development task and we need to be able to scale that effectively. So that's that's a challenge. We have challenges. I mean, all health healthcare organizations are experiencing budgetary, financial constraints so that's a challenge too. We're addressing that by producing some evidence that shows that Xploro can save money. So hopefully, once that evidence is published, that challenge will be reduced. I guess those are the two biggest challenges that we face at the moment, content development and getting over those financial hurdles.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:15]:

When you reflect on how much you've accomplished already with Xploro and where you are, what are some of the things that have surprised you along the way that you didn't expect coming into this?

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:41:29]:

Well, the original idea for Xploro, I talked at the top of the chat about us getting those school kids in. So that was in 2015. That was eight years ago. I didn't expect it to take this long. I think that's true of any startup, really. You never expect the journey to be quite as long as it ends up being I am by no means complaining. I'm having the whale of a time, really enjoying doing what we're doing, and it's really, really rewarding, but it's taking a long time. So I guess that was unexpected. One of the things that I mentioned, that quote we got from that parent, and that's just been I didn't think we could build something that would have that kind of effect. And that's been incredible. And then allied to that, something that I'd like to just briefly mention is what we're doing in Africa. So we paired up with a charity called World Child Cancer about two years ago, and we basically said to them that in lower middle income countries, they can have Xploro licenses for free. Land so now we're seeing kids in Ghana, Cameroon, and Malawi all having access to Xploro. I didn't ever imagine that I would be able to sit here and say that we were in three African countries and soon to be a fourth. Land also looking at some countries in the Far East as well. So having that kind of world breach and being able to affect difference on children, there's no way they would come into contact with something like Xploro normally.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:11]:

So that's been incredible with those lessons and learnings. Is there any advice you would offer up to other aspiring entrepreneurs, people currently building in the healthcare space?

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:43:26]:

Well, don't give up. I think building product in the healthcare space is always a long journey. Land it's always a hard journey, but the rewards can be phenomenal. Land I think you need to have a high degree of resilience. I'm really pick headed when people have told me that, just stop now. It's not going to work. It just makes me work harder. So I think you've just got to be resilient. You've just got to battle on and believe in what you're doing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:59]:

Well, for one, having co founded my own company in the healthcare space, it all resonates very much. It takes a lot longer than you think, but the impact is worth it.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:44:11]:

Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:12]:

So I don't know if my traditional closing question will be fair to you in advance of fully being here in Cleveland, but it happens to be about for hidden gems in the area and other things that people may not know about.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:44:29]:

I guess where I might fall down is that all the things that I consider to be hidden gems in the Cleveland area are probably well known landmarks to anyone that actually lives there. But I'm a frequent visitor to Cleveland and I found the places my go to places, so whenever I come, I usually stay in Ohio City. I really love the area. It's really funky. There's lots of good things to do, lots of good bars, land, restaurants. I've discovered a bar there I particularly like, which is the Velvet Tango Rooms, which is a really cool spot. Last time I was there, which was last week. When I go anywhere, I always like to walk around a city, and I was on a long walk last week ago last Sunday around Cleveland, and I ended up on Larchmere Boulevard. I was hungry, it was lunchtime, I don't eat meat, and I was looking for somewhere good to go. And I discovered a place called Convenient Vegan, which was a really good place for an all you can eat vegan Sunday buffet. So that was really good. And then if I can have one more place, which I'm sure everyone in Cleveland knows about, but I discovered for the first time a couple of months ago, and that was the National Park. Kuya Hoga. Did a lot of walking there and had a lovely time just walking around the park.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:56]:

Yeah, it's a lovely place indeed.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:45:59]:

Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:00]:

Well, Dom, I really appreciate you coming on. I know it took a bit of coordinating here, but it's amazing the work that you're doing and very excited to have you in the community.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:46:13]:

Great. I'm excited to be there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:15]:

If people had anything that they wanted to follow up with you about, what would be the best way for them to do so.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:46:22]:

Best way to do that is to find me on LinkedIn. I think I'm fairly easy to find. You can either type in Xploro or Dom. Raven. Either way, you'll end up finding me. Mention this show in a Connection request and I'll connect.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:38]:

Amazing. Well, thank you. Thank you again, Dom.

Dom Raban (Xploro) [00:46:40]:

This was awesome. Brilliant.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:44]:

That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to Jeffrey at layoftheland FM or find us on Twitter at pod layoftheland or at sternfe. J-E-F-E. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on itunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.