This Week in Innovation: Post CES & NRF Analysis with the Iterate.ai Team

This Week in Innovation: Post CES & NRF Analysis with the Iterate.ai Team

On last week’s episode of This Week in Innovation (TWiIN), podcast co-hosts Jeff Roster and Brian Sathianathan, Iterate.ai’s co-founder and CTO, were joined by special guests from Iterate.ai, Jon Nordmark, co-founder, and CEO, Solomon Ray, Director of Innovation, and Dave Jenkins, VP of Digital Technology and Marketing. These innovation powerhouses come together to recap their experiences while attending the 2023 National Retail Federation (NRF) and Consumer Electronics Show (CES) conferences. In the podcast, three major topics were reviewed: 

1. Digital health
2. A strong sense of optimism for the future of innovation 
3. Virtual reality

Let’s learn about how these three topics were brought to life, below.

The content portion of TWiIN begins with Jon recapping his experience at NRF, noting that digital health was a central theme at the conference. From smartphones recognizing signs of a stroke, to smart earbuds reporting teeth-grinding at night, the miniaturization of sensors and batteries continues to transform digital health. 

Harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) for digital health is not new to us at Iterate.ai. Our low code, AI-powered platform, Interplay®, has a machine learning script that takes in basic health information and other lab-measured inputs to predict the risk of a heart attack. This predictor model can be helpful in personal health apps as consumers look to monitor their own health at a more granular level. 

Digital health was only one of three major motifs discussed on the podcast; Solomon pivots the conversation to the sense of optimism that was felt at CES this year. Solomon explains that the conference’s focus was not on the groundbreaking technology itself, rather, what the technology can offer to the greater public. 

As a general public, we’ve all been through so much change, loss, and disbelief in the past three years. It makes sense that one of the largest technology conferences in the world is prioritizing the public good. From digital health to social and environmental sustainability, there are reasons why we ought to feel optimistic about technological innovation.

Dave wraps up the content-related discussion with his take on hot-topic, the Metaverse. While at NRF, he noticed that the Metaverse was thematically centered around virtual reality (VR.) Dave then explains that the VR industry may face roadblocks when trying to break out of its gaming world origin. Augmented Reality (AR,) on the other hand, may be very successful because of its highly immersive real-life experiences. 

In fact, Dave shares that he encountered an AR company that placed small sensors on a person’s nose to smell a particular scent (e.g. fresh orange juice, a walk in the woods, etc.) The use cases for an AR experience like that are exciting to think about. Additional highlights for this episode of TWiIN include haptic wearables, and AI shopping carts. Want to learn about everything else that was covered in TWiIN? 

Listen to this innovation-packed podcast here!