Shantanu Nundy, MD

Biography

One of the unexpected silver linings around COVID is that it exposed major cracks in the U.S. health care system. While that may not seem like a silver lining, Dr. Shantanu Nundy – physician, entrepreneur and author of the upcoming book, “Care After Covid: What the Pandemic Revealed Is Broken in Healthcare and How to Reinvent It” (McGraw-Hill Education, May 2021) – has a more optimistic view.

“In the past year, the frontlines of care had no choice but to quickly adapt using technologies like telemedicine and new care models like drive-thru and at-home testing. The system changed in a good way. My book is about building on this catalytic moment to further accelerate those changes so more people have access to effective and affordable care,” says Dr. Nundy, Chief Medical Officer at Accolade, a health technology company dedicated to keeping people physically and mentally healthy. “My ultimate goal is to take everything I’ve learned and help fix what’s broken in health care.”

A longtime advocate for using digital technologies to improve and expand access to health care, Dr. Nundy has demonstrated that when doctors partner with AI, there is a dramatic decrease in misdiagnoses and medical mistakes. Digital technologies also offer cost-effective solutions while empowering and unburdening both patients and caregivers. To stem the spread of the virus, the at-home tests he recommended early in the pandemic were examples of such empowerment. He also suggested hospitalizing patients at home during the peak of the New York epidemic, and later outlined ways to address vaccine hesitancy by improving the patient experience.

Long before the pandemic, Dr. Nundy saw AI produce profound results when he was director of the HumanDx project, a MacArthur Foundation-recognized open source platform that leverages the collective intelligence of medical professionals and machine learning. Even then, he urged the health care industry to embrace the power of AI to better serve patients and improve the system and, most importantly, to address the growing problem of medical mistakes, for which patients, doctors and health care companies pay a high price.

Dr. Nundy’s primary focus is on making sure everyone, regardless of socio-economic status, has timely access to quality, effective and affordable physical and mental health care. He sees three paths to get us there:

• Distributing care away from high cost, fixed facilities to the community and homes through technologies that allow providers to reach patients where they are―at home, in the community and, increasingly, on their phones
• Digitally enabling relationships using data and technology that make it easier for doctors and patients to connect
• Decentralizing resources and authority to those closest to care so that decisions around who receives care and how shifts away from governments and insurance companies to communities, employers, doctors and patients

“By strategically designing and implementing technological solutions, we can do more than we are doing now, and do it better, including decoupling payment from location. For example, if a person receives professional nursing care at home, that should still be covered by insurance,” adds Dr. Nundy, who has shared his expertise with such organizations as the World Bank Group, the Food and Drug Administration and the American Medical Association.

As Accolade’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Nundy spends four days a week innovating and improving on digital health care solutions, and on Fridays, he treats underserved Black and Brown communities at a Washington, D.C. clinic. As a lecturer on health care policy at George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health, he offers students real-world perspectives on what the future of digital medicine will look like.

Mental Health and a Safe Return to Work

In preparation for a post-pandemic return to work, Dr. Nundy has been helping Fortune 500 companies across sectors design and implement integrated programs that address both the physical and mental health needs of employees at all levels of the organization. His mental health approach, which provides remote coaching to people on the way in and out of mental health programs, offers policymakers and the health care industry a promising way to scale mental health services.

“COVID first arrived as a physical illness,” says Dr. Nundy. “The second stage is the mental health aspect, the emotional trauma from social distancing, loss of loved ones, the long-haul effects that stay with people. Companies will be dealing with this, especially in the C-suite. We need a more systematic approach to elevating mental health.”

# # #

Physician, entrepreneur and health care technologist Shantanu Nundy, MD, is chief medical officer at Accolade, a health technology company serving more than 2 million Americans. In addition, he practices primary care in the greater Washington, D.C. area and is a professorial lecturer on health policy at the George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health. He also serves as a senior technology advisor to the World Bank. Dr. Nundy’s work has been recognized by the MacArthur Foundation and featured in The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and Wired. He has been an adviser and speaker on digital health and artificial intelligence to the World Bank Group, FDA, AMA and numerous health care startups and investors.

Dr. Shantanu Nundy is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group^®.

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Biography

One of the unexpected silver linings around COVID is that it exposed major cracks in the U.S. health care system. While that may not seem like a silver lining, Dr. Shantanu Nundy – physician, entrepreneur and author of the upcoming book, “Care After Covid: What the Pandemic Revealed Is Broken in Healthcare and How to Reinvent It” (McGraw-Hill Education, May 2021) – has a more optimistic view.

“In the past year, the frontlines of care had no choice but to quickly adapt using technologies like telemedicine and new care models like drive-thru and at-home testing. The system changed in a good way. My book is about building on this catalytic moment to further accelerate those changes so more people have access to effective and affordable care,” says Dr. Nundy, Chief Medical Officer at Accolade, a health technology company dedicated to keeping people physically and mentally healthy. “My ultimate goal is to take everything I’ve learned and help fix what’s broken in health care.”

A longtime advocate for using digital technologies to improve and expand access to health care, Dr. Nundy has demonstrated that when doctors partner with AI, there is a dramatic decrease in misdiagnoses and medical mistakes. Digital technologies also offer cost-effective solutions while empowering and unburdening both patients and caregivers. To stem the spread of the virus, the at-home tests he recommended early in the pandemic were examples of such empowerment. He also suggested hospitalizing patients at home during the peak of the New York epidemic, and later outlined ways to address vaccine hesitancy by improving the patient experience.

Long before the pandemic, Dr. Nundy saw AI produce profound results when he was director of the HumanDx project, a MacArthur Foundation-recognized open source platform that leverages the collective intelligence of medical professionals and machine learning. Even then, he urged the health care industry to embrace the power of AI to better serve patients and improve the system and, most importantly, to address the growing problem of medical mistakes, for which patients, doctors and health care companies pay a high price.

Dr. Nundy’s primary focus is on making sure everyone, regardless of socio-economic status, has timely access to quality, effective and affordable physical and mental health care. He sees three paths to get us there:

• Distributing care away from high cost, fixed facilities to the community and homes through technologies that allow providers to reach patients where they are―at home, in the community and, increasingly, on their phones
• Digitally enabling relationships using data and technology that make it easier for doctors and patients to connect
• Decentralizing resources and authority to those closest to care so that decisions around who receives care and how shifts away from governments and insurance companies to communities, employers, doctors and patients

“By strategically designing and implementing technological solutions, we can do more than we are doing now, and do it better, including decoupling payment from location. For example, if a person receives professional nursing care at home, that should still be covered by insurance,” adds Dr. Nundy, who has shared his expertise with such organizations as the World Bank Group, the Food and Drug Administration and the American Medical Association.

As Accolade’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Nundy spends four days a week innovating and improving on digital health care solutions, and on Fridays, he treats underserved Black and Brown communities at a Washington, D.C. clinic. As a lecturer on health care policy at George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health, he offers students real-world perspectives on what the future of digital medicine will look like.

Mental Health and a Safe Return to Work

In preparation for a post-pandemic return to work, Dr. Nundy has been helping Fortune 500 companies across sectors design and implement integrated programs that address both the physical and mental health needs of employees at all levels of the organization. His mental health approach, which provides remote coaching to people on the way in and out of mental health programs, offers policymakers and the health care industry a promising way to scale mental health services.

“COVID first arrived as a physical illness,” says Dr. Nundy. “The second stage is the mental health aspect, the emotional trauma from social distancing, loss of loved ones, the long-haul effects that stay with people. Companies will be dealing with this, especially in the C-suite. We need a more systematic approach to elevating mental health.”

# # #

Physician, entrepreneur and health care technologist Shantanu Nundy, MD, is chief medical officer at Accolade, a health technology company serving more than 2 million Americans. In addition, he practices primary care in the greater Washington, D.C. area and is a professorial lecturer on health policy at the George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health. He also serves as a senior technology advisor to the World Bank. Dr. Nundy’s work has been recognized by the MacArthur Foundation and featured in The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and Wired. He has been an adviser and speaker on digital health and artificial intelligence to the World Bank Group, FDA, AMA and numerous health care startups and investors.

Dr. Shantanu Nundy is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group^®.

Speech Topics

Care After COVID: Technology’s Role in Improving Health Care

COVID-19 has organizations reevaluating every aspect of their business model from how employees work together to how products and services are delivered to customers. According to Dr. Shantanu Nundy, this is good news for the U.S. health care industry which has long been broken and in need of fixing. Even before the pandemic, Dr. Nundy was working to improve the health care system by equipping both patients and providers with technologies for streamlining processes in a way that improved the patient experience. The value of such technologies was highlighted during the pandemic when, out of necessity, they were quickly and successfully employed. In this presentation, based on his new book, “Care After Covid: What the Pandemic Revealed Is Broken in Healthcare and How to Reinvent It” (May 2021), Dr. Nundy discusses ways industry leaders can further accelerate those changes so more people, regardless of their socio-economic status or geographic location, can have access to safe and effective care.

Back to Work: Worksite Safety and Monitoring

With the continued threat of COVID-19, essential businesses of many types, including health care organizations, face extraordinary health and safety challenges when bringing employees back to physical workspaces. Too often, employers have adopted narrow approaches that focus only on worksite safety – masks, social distancing, ventilation, deep cleaning, on-site temperature checks – due to a minimal understanding of best practices and uncertainty about financial outcomes. Drawing from research he has conducted as CMO of Accolade and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a health technology company that serves more than 2 million people, Dr. Shantanu Nundy explains why it is critical for businesses to invest in a comprehensive, clinical approach for COVID-19 workplace safety, including utilizing a dedicated clinical team for triage and clinical support, contact tracing, outbound communications and routine check-ins.

Addressing Mental Health in the Workplace

COVID has caused both physical and mental health problems, leaving people to deal with emotional trauma, loss of loved ones and long-term effects. In addition to developing and advocating for technologies that address the physical needs of patients, Dr. Nundy has been researching and designing systems to address the mental health needs of both patients and caregivers, especially in this precarious moment when people are grappling with issues like stress, anxiety and, in some cases, suicidal tendencies. In this presentation, Dr. Nundy will review how these systems can meet patients where they are through technology-based models for care, including providing remote coaching to people on the way in and out of mental health programs. This step would unburden the current system while offering patients a much-needed hand to hold and a more personalized experience during their journey back to health.

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Advance Praise for “Care After COVID”

“The COVID pandemic has challenged us all to reimagine the healthcare of the future. This book makes a compelling case to start in the community and in the home, and with patients themselves. Shantanu has a knack for seeing around the corner and being able to bridge where the system is today to where it needs to be. In this new book, he shares a powerful framework that healthcare leaders globally can use to accelerate progress on health for the world’s most vulnerable.”

— Mickey Chopra, MD, PhD, Global Solutions Lead for Service Delivery in the Health Nutrition and Population global practice of the World Bank and former Chief of Health at UNICEF

“Few physicians have accomplished as much as Shantanu Nundy to reinvent medicine—from pioneering improvements in teamwork in operating rooms across the world at the World Health Organization and building the world’s largest open medical project with tens of thousands of doctors to revolutionizing employer healthcare at Accolade. This new book translates Shantanu’s vision for the future of healthcare into a pragmatic and highly applicable guide for employers, technologists, policymakers, and patients to transform our healthcare system after this terrible pandemic.”

— Marty Makary, MD, MPH, Chief of Islet Transplant Surgery and Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins and New York Times bestselling author of “The Price We Pay”

“Dr. Nundy’s book is a must-read for anybody who has tried to understand how we can take a catastrophe such as the pandemic and our lack of a national response and try and emerge as a stronger nation. His insights are practical yet sophisticated because he brings his clinical instincts, his business acumen, and his heart to each page. There will be a number of books that reflect on 2020 and beyond, but ‘Care After COVID’ should be at the top of everyone’s reading list.”

— Kavita Patel, MD, MSHS, NBC News contributor, MSNBC columnist, and Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution

“Shantanu is a remarkable bridge-builder between care now and care for the future. He is the rare and brilliant guide we need to cross successfully at a time of massive change. His book is required reading for all decision-makers in healthcare.”

— Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, FRCP, former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement

“We’re at the start of a new golden era for tech-enabled healthcare, and Shantanu Nundy artfully illustrates the primary forces that are driving the reimagination of our care delivery system from the ground up. Shantanu’s work is a call to arms for both innovators who are building virtual-first care models, as well as incumbents that will need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant in the post-pandemic ‘next normal.’”

— Julie Yoo, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

“Dr. Nundy represents the best of American medicine—a Hopkins-trained physician and MIT engineer who has spent a career inventing new ways of delivering healthcare and caring for the underserved. In ‘Care After Covid,’ Shantanu translates his experiences into a bold and compelling vision for where healthcare must go that will resonate with providers and C-suite leadership alike.”

— Senator Bill Frist, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and heart and lung transplant surgeon

“Too many in healthcare are asking for how we can ‘get back to normal,’ rather than work to use this crisis to create a new, better normal for patients. Nundy asks the right questions to help envision the future we need.”

— Sachin H. Jain, MD, MBA, President and CEO of SCAN Group and Health Plan and Adjunct Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine

“’Care After Covid’ is essential reading for anyone in healthcare who seeks to turn understanding into action. Written with a sense of urgency and grounded in his clinical practice, Dr. Nundy helps us look around the corner at what could be in our post-pandemic reality. His imagination and vision are rooted in a humility that offers fresh perspectives on healthcare delivery.”

— Dave A. Chokshi, MD, MSc, New York City Health Commissioner

“Out of a public health crisis, a healthcare revolution has been born. Dr. Shantanu Nundy, a brilliant, visionary physician innovator, provides a road map to the future of health in the twenty-first century. This landmark book describes how the Covid-19 pandemic revealed stunning inequities and inefficiencies in the US healthcare system which existed for all too long.”

— Rear Admiral Susan Blumenthal, MD, MPA (ret.), former US Assistant Surgeon General and Clinical Professor at Tufts and Georgetown University Schools of Medicine

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