55 - COVIDCast #6 - Dr. Danish Nagda Founder/CEO of Rezilient - Merging Telemedicine and Robotics

Summary: Today’s episode is a conversation I co-hosted with Maryam, one of the VP’s of Curriculum for Penn HealthX, and our guest, Dr. Danish Nagda. Dr. Nagda is the founder and CEO of Rezilient, an exciting telemedicine company. From their website: After speaking to countless physicians, they’ve heard the same rationale for the lack of adoption of current virtual care solutions for outpatient care: Doctors don’t see themselves consistently using telehealth because of the inability to perform their objective physical assessments through videoconferencing. We believe that this current gap between in-person and internet-based outpatient care can be addressed by incorporating recent advances in medical robotics and digital health into the clinical workflow. Through our web-based care command center, physicians can assume control of a mobile medical robot in our network, allowing them to deliver in-person care from a distance. Prior to founding Rezilient, Danish was formerly a founder at Schoology, the first social learning platform, which now has had over 20 million users in 130 countries. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his MD and Wharton MBA. Since the beginning of his ENT residency at Washington University in St Louis, he has served in advisory roles for Doximity, Inventr, and Enterprise Bank & Trust. In the episode, we discuss how he became interested in the intersection of business and medicine, why he chose ENT, why he founded the company Rezilient to improve telehealth capabilities, and what the last few months have been like due to increased demand for such services. We also discuss the future of telemedicine, it’s limitations, and how physicians need to drive continued innovation and policy now that we are at a crossroads. He also makes the case that medical students have the potential to be the greatest innovators in the medical field, especially as it relates to COVID in part because we are still learning, have more time, and we are allowed to make mistakes. Footnotes Danish’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nagda/ Rezilient Website: https://www.rezilient.io/