Jagdeep Bijwadia, MD, MBA

Tell us about yourself.

I am a practicing physician, board certified in internal medicine, pulmonary, and sleep medicine. I am also founder and CEO of a national sleep telemedicine practice (Sleepmedrx) serving all 50 US states. I currently hold a faculty position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Pulmonary Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at the University of Minnesota and have a private practice in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I was fortunate to have served as president for the Minnesota Sleep Society from 2016 to 2018 and am active in promoting sleep health in Minnesota. Completing an MBA from the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis has helped me gain a wider perspective on important business aspects of Medicine. I serve as Chief Medical Officer for Whole You and am a clinical consultant for Ectosense.

With your background as a pulmonologist, how did you learn so much about how dentists work in their clinic?

I have been involved with dental sleep medicine for several years and am invested in improving collaboration between physicians and dentists while reducing barriers for patients to get their preferred therapy. As a sleep physician, I think offering alternatives to CPAP is a critical part of comprehensive patient management. Sleep disordered breathing is a natural extension of my work as a pulmonologist with noninvasive ventilation modalities such as CPAP and BIPAP. I realize however that adherence rates to CPAP are very poor and that dental devices are a very effective option in many cases. I have spent the last few years developing telemedicine-based pathways that follow all the clinical guidelines to help guide a patient from a dentist’s chair to diagnosis and prescription reducing barriers for patients. Being founder of SleepMedRx has helped me learn what the pain points are for dentists as they start down the dental sleep career path and partner to help our mutual patients by reducing impediments to moving forward with the right treatment.

How do you see the future of dentist-physician collaboration going as communications improve?

Acceptance of dental devices is steadily growing amongst sleep physicians as the scientific evidence of their effectiveness grows, and patients are becoming more aware of alternatives to CPAP. Technology has played a big role in allowing sleep testing to become so much easier and more available. Telehealth is also allowing dentist-physician collaboration to occur across state lines and in places where dentists did not have easy access to sleep specialists. In the near future, technology to continuously monitor the compliance and effectiveness of dental devices will further increase acceptance of dental devices as a primary option for treatment of OSA. I therefore think the most exciting times for dentist and physician collaboration are in the very
near future.