Cortex Square One Alums Improve Health Care Outcomes

Danish Nagda describes himself as a reluctant entrepreneur. A physician by training, Nagda assumed he would spend his professional life as a clinician, and was well on his way down that path as an ENT resident at Washington University School of Medicine. Then, life presented him with a situation he could not ignore — one that would alter his professional trajectory and has the potential to change the health care industry at large. 

“My dad had a heart attack in his 50s, then became bed-bound with heart failure and died at 69,” Nagda says. “He’d achieved the immigrant American dream, but despite having health insurance, he still didn’t have access to care. We took a step back and asked how it was that Dad got here, and we realized that there are families like mine all over the country.”