Health Makers: With MedWand, Geographical Barriers to Patient Care Are Removed

Name Samir Qamar, MD

Age 47

Title and Company CEO of MedWand Solutions

Samir Qamar, MD, grew up around the world. The son of a United Nations diplomat, he lived in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

“My dad worked for the agricultural division of the U.N. and was responsible for feeding people around the world,” says Dr. Qamar, who currently lives in Las Vegas. “He would help feed millions of people. Many people consider food a basic human necessity.”

The experience shaped who he is and the type of work he does: bringing healthcare to as many people as possible. As a physician, Qamar considers healthcare a basic human necessity. But not everyone has access to it.

“I want to help as many people as I can — that’s what drives me in all of my healthcare ventures,” he says.

He’s doing just that with MedWand, a telemedicine device that allows practitioners to conduct exams. “It evaporates geographical borders, which has always been a huge barrier to medical access,” he says.

From Concierge Care to Virtual Primary Care

Qamar’s, and MedWand’s, story dates back to the early aughts. After finishing his medical training at the University of Pennsylvania’s Lancaster General Hospital in 2005, he moved to Monterey, California, where he was the house doctor for Pebble Beach Resorts, one of the first concierge practices in California.

At the time, concierge medicine was a new concept. “Back then no one was doing it,” he says. “I became a very big fish in a small pond.”

He then launched MedLion, a direct primary care company, which later became a virtual primary care company. As the company grew, he realized that as beautiful as Monterey was, he wanted to scale his company. So in 2012 he moved to Vegas.

“It’s a clean slate for healthcare and tech,” he says. “You can make what you want when you come here.”

Recognizing the Limitations of Video-Based Visits

In 2013, Qamar began advising Google on telemedicine and piloted their Google Helpouts telemedicine program in Nevada with MedLion. (Google Helpouts shut down in 2015.)

That’s when he recognized just how limited telemedicine really was: It was all video based. Doctors couldn’t examine patients the way they would in person.

“In the real world, if you came into my office, you would expect to receive some sort of exam, to get your vitals taken, to have me look at your throat,” he says. “If you don’t get that, you’d leave dissatisfied.”

This shortcoming of virtual visits frustrated Qamar. “It’s a double standard,” he says. “You have one standard where you need an exam and another where you don’t. I don’t like double standards.”

He started looking for a way to close the gap between in-person doctor visits and virtual ones.

A Smartphone Sparks the Idea for a Diagnostic Device

After trying to listen to a distant family member’s lungs with her iPhone microphone, he decided to take apart his own iPhone. As he was playing with the components, it hit him that some of the hardware within the phone could be used for diagnostic purposes. The camera, for example, could be used to peer into someone’s ear or throat. The microphone could be amplified to listen to a heartbeat.

From there, he teamed up with medical engineer Robert Rose, and together they launched MedWand in 2015.

“MedWand is almost like the telephone of medical examinations,” says Qamar. “It may not be as good as in person, but you can do a lot with what we’ve created.”

MedWand, which Qamar describes as the size of a “small teacup,” has 10 diagnostic options, including a built-in stethoscope; an autoscope, to look inside the ear canal; an ophthalmoscope, to see into the back of the eye; and a dermatoscope, to measure skin lesions. It also has a thermometer, which measures temperature with infrared waves. With MedWand, a doctor can look into a patient’s nose and throat, measure their heart rate and oxygen levels, and do an electrocardiogram, to measure the electrical activity of the heart.

All the patient has to do is connect the device to their computer or tablet. All the physician needs on the other end is a computer or smartphone.

“I can examine you anywhere in the world,” Qamar says. “I would be watching you on the video platform [and] guide you on where to put the device. I can amplify the sound of your heart and even move the camera around while you keep it still.”

Application for Emergency Use Authorization

MedWand, which won an innovation award at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, is currently sold to clients in countries that don’t require approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In the United States, it is being investigated by the FDA, a process that should be completed by late summer. After that, the base unit will retail for $399.

But Qamar has also applied for immediate FDA approval under the federal Emergency Use Authorization so MedWand can be used to help with the COVID-19 pandemic now.

“Once we take the massive step to remove geographical barriers to patient health, I think devices like MedWand are going to become very, very big,” he says. “There will come a time when your cardiologist might be in Florida, your neurologist will be in Texas, and they’ll have instruments where they can examine you from a distance.”