The Future of Light Therapy and Beauty Innovation with Nuon Medical Technologies

0:04Hey guys, welcome back to Skin Anarchy. This is your host Ekta and I'm really excited about our interview today because this is a topic we're going to be discussing a topic that we don't really get to talk to skin a topic.

0:30He's an innovator and a visionary in this field. You know, he has a very strong background in medical device innovation. And he is the CEO of Nuon Medical Technologies. Please welcome Alain. Welcome, Alain. I'm so excited to host you. Yeah, wow. That is an amazing introduction. Thank you so much, Ekta. So, yeah, no, definitely I'm excited to be on the podcast today and love to talk about the future and what cosmetics has to still see. and what we're bringing definitely in the market now. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm really, really thrilled that you agreed to do this because I've been very curious as a consumer, obviously, but also from the science side, just in how technology is now integrating with the beauty space, with the skincare space.

1:18It's a very exciting time right now, I think, for many consumers. When we look out into this world and with you and what you're doing in your work, it's truly revolutionizing. You know, the way that consumers interact with our beauty products. And I want to get started, Elaine, with first learning about you, because I know your background is truly, truly amazing and very impressive. So if you could tell us what got you into this field, I mean, where did it all begin for the brand or the company and your innovations? Where did it all start? Yes. So actually, we're part of a bigger company where we have Kaya Medical behind us.

1:55And Kaya Medical, I started up about 20 years ago from now. So 20 years ago, I started with Kaya Medical, and it all started with just realizing and seeing the benefits of what particularly light therapy could do for people. So with that 20 year of history, yeah, making medical devices in Cayenne Medical from medical operation lights. So those big operation lights in surgical rooms all the way to teeth whitening lights, to LED facial masks, to the handheld beauty devices that you see either in a Sephora or in Ulta. all these different type of medical devices that we really change people. So we really are a class two medical device all the way to those hair grow, laser devices, the caps, the combs and so on.

2:55Yeah, all these type of devices we have been producing in the last 20 years. And we do multiple millions of these type of devices each year. So just to get a scope, last year we have made over 600 SKUs in the full year. And this year we are already over it. So over the 600 SKUs right now. So, yeah, the market is really growing in these type of medical devices, particularly light therapy. but um yeah as as we are in nuan medical uh we set up nuan medical for just one and a half year now so one and a half year with the the 20 years of medical device history though no that's very fascinating because i think you know that's that's what i see a lot of right now is that there's a merging happening you know there's almost like the lines are blending exactly you know?

3:55And that's very exciting because, you know, when you think about something like, you know, hair health or skin health or any of this stuff, you have to bring in this really advanced way of thinking, you know, when it comes to how human physiology works. And I think light therapy is really at that front and center of that, you know? So I'd love for you to. Yeah, we still really understand it. We're still at the point of, okay, how do we really measure light. So we measure light now with electricity, but it's much more than that. And how do you measure what it does on your body? We're still not familiar with.

4:32So it's a blank space, but it shows amazing results. And the fun of light therapy is that it doesn't really have a side effect. So the only side effect is carbonization. What definitely is in the higher, higher powers where you're burning the skin. Now, we see amazing benefits. We explore every couple of months a new feature that light therapy can do. And as a medical device manufacturer, the thing is what we also do is we support medical clinical studies with free devices. So we make free devices for clinical studies out there that are involving light therapy. And the cool thing is that because of that, we see now that light therapy is used for things like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, urinal tract infection, monocular degeneration.

5:31So you have so many amazing benefits, but then taking that knowledge and bringing it all the way down to skin care and really understanding the precision of the medical device treatments and bringing that into taking care of your face, taking care of your skin is so much fun. and you really see that I like to explain it as we're the electronic toothbrush of the toothpaste industry. So, you know, as you try to brush your teeth now with your finger, we are the electronic toothbrush. So we're making sure that we use that history, that electronic device manufacturing history, and we enhance now the whole cosmetic experience from the way that people use the cosmetics all the way to the absorption of the cosmetics all the way to enhancing the cosmetics results.

6:30And the beauty of this is that it gives an instant result very often, instant gratification. And yeah, no, it's an amazing merge. And as you said, the fine lines from medical device to cosmetics, they're just getting closer and closer and closer. And that is where Nuon plays a very essential role. Yeah, that's very, very exciting. You know, I think one of the biggest, I think, gray areas for many consumers, especially in especially with the skin care devices. Right. Is this understanding of like what is truly good red light therapy device? Like what is a good device versus a bad one? You know, that's a big question that comes up.

7:11And I'd love for you to speak about this because, you know, we want to understand, you know, what should we be looking for in products that are, you know, saying this is a light based product. And, you know, what whether it's wavelengths or whatever, can you educate us a little bit there, you know, about the basics of what should consumers be looking for? So I'm not sure how long the podcast can be, but the real education, I can tell you that we built a little website that we used prominently for internal use. It's called clinicalstudies.com. I uploaded there about 8 ,000 studies about light therapy.

7:54And on that, clinicalstudies.com, I put an AI. So we built a little AI and you can search generic questions about how can light work for your pores, your sunscreen protection, any like those type of questions. And it will come out with what milliwatts you need to use, how many joules and what is the wavelength. Now, to more easily explain it is that to really get into the details, I would suggest always to look into, firstly, the FDA. So the medical device clearance that the device in the company has, because that already differentiates a lot. There are a lot of devices out there that don't carry a 510k clearance or they don't carry the FDA.

8:47and that really shows that likely they don't have the right specifications that you need to do the essential treatment. So for a manufacturer to gain a 510K clearance, they need to follow the FDA rules. So they need to follow certain specifications, certain rules, and that also ensures that the consumer get an efficacious device. Now, of course, in those devices, they're better, they're good, and they're mediocre devices. And, of course, this takes a little bit more knowledge. It's not just about the wavelength. It's not just about the pulse that is using for a frequency or that is using for pulsating the energy.

9:38It's also not just about the milliwatts a centimeter square. So there are multiple values that you have. But what I can say to you is that what you see right now on the market that carries an FDA is already a pretty good standard to go from. Yeah, that's very important, I think, the messaging of that. Because, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there. And I think many times marketing takes over. And that's why I asked you, because, you know, a lot of times I'm scrolling through social media and I'm looking at people using things. I'm like, I don't know who makes this stuff, but I don't think that's valid, you know.

10:17So I think for consumers, it becomes very important to have this understanding. Also, you know, from the brand side, I would love for you to speak on this a little bit. But if there's a brand that's wanting to get into the space of offering this medical grade device in their offerings and their SKUs, where should they start in terms of understanding how to integrate this kind of light therapy into what they're offering to their consumers? Where can brands really begin? so so often often we don't see that it's the case that they're hesitant or they're not aware of how these devices work very often you see that uh people already are familiar with light therapy from a salon treatment so when you go to an average salon beauty salon they already have something like a light therapy panel or light therapy device.

11:13And on that, you can very easily and very quickly see the effect of how light, for example, reduce acne. It's more the other way around. And it's a very strange synergy here. It's that they know it works. and we often and I can tell you this case study of Procter & Gamble for example we often see that it really works and that they come back after a user study that they go like wow Ellen acne is gone within the next 7 to 10 days and it doesn't come back somehow what's going on you know why are these slides working so well and then you often see that this message is then very, very difficult to confer to the marketing team because the marketing team is all about that replenishment sales, right?

12:13They're selling the cream and then find a way how they can sell and resell that cream again. Now, that's not the case with a medical device and that makes it, and they often see that it makes them very hesitant to go and add, what was the case with Procter & Gamble, add an LED facial mask into the production line of Procter & Gamble. That time for Clearasil, I recall, where they said, oh, it really works. The study is amazing. But then we don't know how to sell it because once we put it against a cream or a foam, that reduces acne, this is something that people buy again. The mask, they buy, and then two, three years later, they won't buy it again.

13:06So that is something where I think a company, Shiseido, owns the company now, and it's called Dennis Gross. And they did an amazing job. So, yeah, we designed the product line for the company, And what we did is we designed only five products for them and it weighed against the total turnover of about 200 SKUs of cosmetics. so when you calculated the turnover of the five devices that don't have an expiration date that were sold as complementary to the cosmetic product line they outsold those five devices outsold the turnover with the 200 skews that they were carrying already so you can see the impact that it can have if you already have a cosmetic line you don't need to be afraid of adding a device that that is very functional and that really works and that that people really start to use as a as almost as a skincare habit and and this is what we try to show and really amplify with our company Nuon Medical where we we step away from the devices because they're quite scary for a lot of cosmetic companies, but we work it into the packaging.

14:36So we merge the cosmetic device into the cosmetic packaging, what now not becomes an or, either this or either that sales, but it becomes a complementary to sales. And then suddenly it becomes a very easy decision. but I can definitely tell you that in the last 20 years when we talked to cosmetic companies it was always in a conversation that not like ah does it really work but why would people still buy my cosmetics and and now with this uh somehow this concept where we said okay the only thing what we're going to do is not selling devices but it's selling complementary products to the cosmetics and we utilize our 20 years of medical device manufacturing to complement everything that the cosmetic company tries to do and with that view that mission uh we see that that it's a lot easier for cosmetic companies to embrace the idea of adding a medical device into their cosmetic packaging or into just their program that they sell to the customers.

15:56That makes sense. And that's actually very brilliant because I think you're, you know, you're absolutely right in what you said. I think for a lot of people, it can be a very, I don't know, it can be a little scary, right? To figure out like how does a standalone device work, you know, compared to something that's integrated into the packaging. Yeah. That's very brilliant. I mean, you know, and I want to ask you, you know, what, why do you believe that the future of cosmetics lies in this active applicator approach? I mean, just to speak on that a little bit more. So I'm very much from the point of view that if a user, a product only works as much as the user is using it.

16:35And when we do product development in the past, we have seen that the only real functional products are not the ones that are engineered, but are the ones that came out of a user's idea of what they perceive to be the best feeling and the best experience to use or to do this type of treatment. And I can tell you that once you start, for example, once you start to apply an eye cream with a spatula, you will never go back to the eye cream in your fingers again. The cooling effect, the way of applying it, using the spatula is already 10 times nicer than just your finger. Now, as a user, if you start to add something like light therapy or ultrasonic treatment or anything like an eye amphorosis or galvanic treatment with it, you start to see that even the application of the eye cream to your skin now has that enhanced glow, has that enhanced feeling that you're not just applying it to the skin, but you're treating the skin at the same moment while you're putting the eye cream on your face.

17:50what you have been doing the last 10 years already. Now, that enhanced user experience is something that you cannot go around. Once you experience it, it's something that you as a brand and as a user, you will not go back anymore to, oh, let me put some cream, put it on my finger and apply it under my eye. So it's almost, it's an inevitable customer experience that, yeah, if you now go and think of the Nokia and text messages with the ABCs and the pressing three times to get the C, it sounds like very good. But once we have experienced the touchscreen, we don't go back anymore. Now, that's exactly what Nuon does with medical devices and the cosmetic application to it.

18:40The cool thing is we're reading out your skin diagnostics. So while you're applying it to the skin, it tells you what is the moist of your skin, what is the oil of your skin, what is the gloss of your skin. All these basic diagnostics that you then can go and put into a skin diary just on your phone and just by tapping it. No Bluetooth, nothing. Just tap it on your phone and it sends it to your skin diary. And just as simple as that, you have a customized personal cosmetic treatment solution for you. Once you have experienced such a feeling, there is no way you want something else anymore. Yeah, that's that's so cool.

19:25Like, I mean, I feel like that's it's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah. I mean, that's the future. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, it's not the future. It's what we have now. It's now. It's now. It's now. I could say, yeah, it's definitely. once you experience a fillet you you you don't go back anymore you go like wow this is so logical it tells me my situation of my skin it tells me what the improvement of the cosmetics are using it and then it also enhances the way that it absorbs that it treats the skin so it's inevitable it's it's just a very logical solution and that is almost as logical as applying toothpaste with your fingers or with a toothbrush.

20:11And now it's not just an average toothbrush, it's an electronic toothbrush. So that's how logical Nuon is for the cosmetic industry. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense, actually. And, you know, what's interesting is that with anything, it requires you to consistently, you know, use it, right, with any kind of therapy, whether that's, you know, light therapy, whether that's topicals, whatever it might be, you have to have consistency. So I think this is actually very, very interesting to me when I look at it from like a physician standpoint, because now you have, you know, people now complying to this, this regimen that you're doing every day.

20:46And so the therapy is going to work because now you're actually utilizing it day in and day out. And now with the diagnostics. You're giving them a feedback, you're giving them the diagnostics because for a lot of people, I can tell you, for example, the under the eye treatment is the worst uh customer feedback the device that we get because of course your your your under eyes they age three times faster than your face uh or at least it shows three times faster now what it is is that uh when you when you see uh the feedback of people using light therapy under their eyes uh they they very easily will say oh it's not working and i give up you You know, because they want to see something that does something overnight.

21:33Now, the beauty is, is that once you start to add a diagnostic tool to this, then suddenly it's not the eye cream. It's not the device, but they really start to see that the gloss, the gloss of your skin. If you just measure that, it goes up in the first session of using the device. It goes up about 10 percent already. So just the shininess of your face itself. It's not just the wrinkle reduction. Of course, the wrinkle reduction is not from the day one to day two, but just the shininess, the gloss, the energy-looking face that you can have when you want to go out with your friends at night, that you want to have that shiny look.

22:15That is already a very easy validation point that you can see by using one time the device together with any cosmetics, and you will see that the gloss on your face already increases by that much. So that's a very, it's a very, yeah, somehow satisfying number for people to see, hey, my gloss of my skin is now this much. I use the tool, it becomes that much. I use it together with the cream and it even increases with that much. And those type of diagnostics really create that habit. and once you get skin care habits together with the device then is when you get the customer retention and that is where right now with especially with the the gen c and and the younger generation you see that customers yeah customers they stay to a brand for maximum two three months and then they switch to another brand.

23:20Now, once we give the diagnostics and once we give the feedback to the customer and we add value to the cosmetics itself, you see that the retention to the brand is almost up to 100 % because people start to see feedback and they start to stick to it. And then once they see the improvement, it almost gamifies the beauty habit of starting to use it on a daily basis. Yeah, I like that you use that word. It does. It makes it like a game. That's very true. Like for me, I think as a consumer, when I can see physically see the diagnostics, right, of something and I can see that this is working and here are the numbers and that makes you kind of like, you know, it's habit formation right there because you're it's all the senses being utilized, you know, to understand.

24:11Oh, I love that. That's wonderful. Exactly. Yeah. So and I think that once you get that type of habit creation, then any cosmetic formula will work and any cosmetic device will add a lot of value because it's all about making sure you stay in that routine. You keep using it. And by getting the feedback, I can tell you that, yeah, people are a lot more stickier to a brand because they actually see numbers and they actually get that gratification that it does something. Right. Now, I want to ask you a little bit more on the technical side of things, because I know that it's very, very difficult to obviously create these devices, but then also creating them in a way now you're doing it with where it's incorporated with packaging.

24:55So the components are smaller. How does that work from the tech side? I mean, what were some of the hurdles that your team came across when you guys were really trying to bring this technology into a smaller space? yeah you couldn't ask us to do the same thing 20 years ago there was not possible there there was no way that we could put these type of frequencies or this type of power or this type of battery life into something that people can carry and and use mobile uh forget about making it waterproof and all in one that was impossible so for the last 20 years we normally we were always making those big salon slash home-use devices that cost a couple hundred dollars all the way up to even a couple thousand dollars.

25:44And we have been making those for so many years. So now, as you see technology going smaller and smaller and smaller, we definitely notice that also in our industry, we're able now to make what normally was something that was a huge medical device that you need to hold with two hands. We now can slim all the way down to just something as simple as a guasa. So what we now can do with just a guasa tool where we can add microcurrent, we can add EMS, and we can add light therapy or even a laser treatment is something that we can do in something as small as a guasa or a spatula or just an applicator of a tip of a tube, something with 20 years was impossible.

26:3620 years ago, no way. But definitely now, with everything becoming so much smaller and so much more advanced, the power that we can pull out of a battery is many multiples of that also of two years ago. So two years ago, if we wanted to pull that power out of a battery, the battery pack needed to be five times, six times bigger. Now the battery technology is so advanced that we can take that power and on a very short time deliver it to the skin, what used to be on a very large device. So it's a very beautiful time for this technology. Right. You know, it's very fascinating because now a lot of, I know a lot of dermatology clinics here in the U.S.

27:23are starting to do this where they're integrating ai into those facial mapping um softwares right so that's becoming very widely used and so that makes me wonder now more about light therapy because when we discuss light therapy we need to understand like the penetration and the depth of the effect because now you know patients are being exposed to here's where your tissue is lacking here's where you know like you know for example collagen elastin like this is where you're lacking This is where you need more treatment. So, you know, when you look at something like that, what are the ways that you guys are kind of integrating with the system of like, you know, where now AI is taking over and giving people more information?

28:02So, you know, is it more of like a precision driven approach, I guess, is my question with what you're creating? So what we see is that a lot of the values, they're very static. so 20 joules is equal to so many minutes is equal to dismount power so a lot of these very static approaches they come from clinical studies and we need to stick to them we cannot be too creative with those values because once we start to be creative with those values then the fda doesn't approve our treatment anymore as an official treatment. What we can do is we can be very creative in the feedback that we diagnose a skin.

28:50So once we get, for example, feedback of your skin has 20 % water, 30 % oil, this much gloss, then we can use AI for a treatment protocol. So we can suggest by first scanning your face, we can suggest and we use we use scanning technologies that we put into as small as a spatula or the tip of a tube. So when you take an eye cream tube, we apply two rollerballs on it. those rollerballs could diagnose the skin. And they can diagnose the skin for things like gloss, water, moist retention, intensity even, collagen, oil, all these type of things. And we have cost-reduced those type of measuring technologies from something that you use in a clinic that costs you$25 ,000 to even sometimes$50 ,000 to do these type of measurements.

30:03We have pulled our diagnostics at the same level of those clinical devices and we made it into a home use technology for a couple of dollars or even less. And what it does is those home use devices, they communicate directly with your phone or an app. And, of course, the app itself then can give you an AI-suggested skin protocol, what will then directly relate to the cosmetics that you're trying to use for your face. With the devices, so like light therapy or microcurrent or galvanic or EMS or TENS or so on, we cannot be too creative. As I said, the FDA doesn't allow us, but we can suggest it.

30:53We can suggest that we say, okay, for this time, because your moist of your skin is lower, we suggest you to use a red light instead of an infrared light. Or we suggest you to use this type of gyvenic treatment or iron for Isis instead of EMS. Now, in that type of suggestion, we can still be very creative, but we can't be creative in the treatment time or in the treatment dose or in the jewels or in the energy that we deliver to the skin because we need to stay up to that efficacious level that we're able to make the claim that we do something good and that we actually do that treatment for your skin.

31:38That makes sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know that there's still like, I'm sure there's so much potential that you can't really bring out yet. but I can understand there are limitations because of, you know, obviously FDA and stuff. But, you know, I want to ask you about this. This is a very important conversation, I think, that's happening right now, and especially skin science. And that's longevity. You know, what does longevity mean? How does light therapy play into longevity? And I'd love for you to speak on this, you know, like, where do you think we should be headed in our understanding of how light really plays a role with actual skin longevity.

32:14So skin longevity, you can look into several different ways. Now, of course, how you look, what shows on your face is the longevity treatments that you've been doing and the way that you treat your skin. We all understand that there should be a healthy layer of fat on yourself, for example. Now, trying to freeze your skin to get that short-term benefit of reducing the puffiness creates, of course, a long-term disadvantage on the fat on your face. So there are several types of treatments where you have a short-term gain that you look today better, but you have a long-term disadvantage. now with Nuon we try to stay away from those can say destructive treatments for example there's one out there that is radio frequency on your skin so radio frequency on the skin very often you see that short-term benefit but you're creating a disadvantage on the long-term telomere of each shell that you have.

33:32And of course, you don't want to reduce that just for that short-term gain. And maybe there are some people that do, but we're not doing that with Nuon. So with Nuon, what we do is we create and we use tools that have all already longevity in mind because we're not trying to create any destructive measurements to create a short-term gain. So what we do is we re-energize the cells. We stimulate the muscles. We stimulate the blood flow. We push absorption of peptides by using ultrasonic movements to push it into the skin. We do negative ion treatment on top of the layer to absorb the cosmetics and absorb the collagen peptides.