Rezilient is innovating to provide senior living residents better access to their doctors.
Residents living in senior living communities often experience physical barriers to care, such as difficulty or inability to travel to medical appointments, ambulatory problems, and hearing and sight impairments. Doctors increasingly find themselves buried under large caseloads; the volume of cases and the rise in urgency and complexity of care required for this population make the delivery of effective and efficient medical care to residents quite challenging for providers.
While some senior living providers have adopted technologies such as telehealth (i.e. Skype for medical appointments), these platforms are limited in what a doctor can diagnose through the platform. Rezilient is aiming to solve these problems by building technology that extends telehealth beyond just communication, enabling doctors to deliver comprehensive, convenient, and high-quality care to residents where they live.
Rezilient allows doctors to both communicate and examine their patients through an easy-to-use web interface using robot avatars located at senior living communities. Rezilient platform features are built with seniors in mind, and include hearing aid compatibility, real-time video access for families, and a bedside nurse that accompanies the robot with each appointment.
According to Rezilient, research has shown reduction in hospitalizations of high-risk residents by almost 40% and increased lifespan by up to 25% when primary care is consistently offered onsite in senior housing(1). Onsite primary care has also been shown to improve the senior living providers’ bottom line, reducing resident move-outs by 27%(2), resulting in over $200,000 in savings for a 100-bed community. Providing on-site primary care today, however, requires the establishment of expensive on-site facilities and agreements with physician groups.
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However, now, by partnering with Rezilient, senior living communities can reap the benefits of onsite medical care without the large operational burden that would otherwise be involved. Residents and staff are automatically enrolled on the Rezilient platform and each person is assigned a dedicated care coordinator who helps them consolidate their health records, schedule their appointments, and keep their medical team updated with any changes or issues.
Each partnering community gets outfitted with mobile robot avatars that connect to the internet, allowing doctors to operate them remotely, and telepresenters who accompany the robot during each appointment. Each robot avatar comes integrated with off-the-shelf devices used in a physical exam today, such as a stethoscope that enables the doctor to listen to the patient’s heart, lungs, and gastrointestinal sounds, and an otoscope, which enables a visual exam of a patient’s internal ear. Using an intuitive web-based interface, the doctor is able to guide the movement of each device remotely with precision.
The company’s founder and CEO, Danish Nagda, is a doctor and engineer who has led several successful ventures, including Schoology, where as a founder, he helped build their social learning platform, which today, has over 20 million users in 130 countries.
He also serves as an advisor to startups like Inventr and Doximity, and on the Medical Board of companies, like Enterprise Bank & Trust. His inspiration for Rezilient came from his eye-opening experience as a primary caregiver for his father who suffered from cardiac issues and recurrent hospitalizations during his residency in Ear, Nose, and Throat Surgery at Washington University in St. Louis.
“We built this company to bring integrated care solutions to senior living to improve the lives of patients by enabling better access to their doctors and giving doctors more connectivity to their patients,” said Dr. Nagda.
He added, “As a caregiver and a doctor, there’s something really special about the fact that we’re able to solve the problems of so many stakeholders with a single unique solution. Patients don’t have to spend time on the road and in waiting rooms. Doctors get to extend their reach beyond the confines of their location. Family members now get to be just that – family members.”
Rezilient’s Co-Founder and CTO, Jeff Gamble, earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and
has focused his engineering career on building technologies for the disabled and underserved, including product development consulting at Neurolutions, a venture capital-backed medical device startup using data science and robotics to help stroke victims regain hand function.
“We’re really excited to use technology to create a completely new experience for doctors and patients. This is going to be the first time that doctors have this level of control over the exam remotely and even have access to this type of data digitally, period,” said Dr Gamble.
Additional Rezilient team members are Ilker Tunay, PhD – Director of Engineering, Mohit Lala, MS – R&D Engineer, and Alexander Wirtz, MS – Product Engineer.
“What excites me is that we get to redefine telehealth, extending its capabilities so that it can become a standard part of how care is delivered,” commented Wirtz.
Visit https://www.rezilient.io/ to learn more about this company.
1. https://innovation.cms.gov/Files/reports/mccd-hqp-finaleval.pdf
2. https://seniorhousingnews.com/2019/01/31/4-reasons-why-onsite-primary-care-is-mission-critical-for-senior-living/
