S1E31 - Driving Digital Health Innovation: Skateboard to Scooter to Car | HT2C Podcast with Bert Fernandez

HealthTech2Care (HT2C) Podcast featuring Richard 'RJ' Kedziora, Co‑Founder & COO of Estenda Solutions

Richard 'RJ' Kedziora (Guest):

🌐 Estenda Solutions: https://www.estenda.com

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjkedziora 

📺 YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@EstendaSolutionsInc 

Bert Fernandez (Host):

🌐 HealthTech2Care: https://www.healthtech2care.com

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bert-fernandez

📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HealthTech2Care

🎙️ In this episode, RJ Kedziora shares how Estenda helps healthcare, MedTech, and life sciences teams transform ideas into working solutions. He walks through how they're using AI to scale diabetic retinopathy screening for the Indian Health Service, retraining models as imaging tech evolves, and building a domain-specific olfactory data repository with GenAI-powered analytics. From unstructured data and FHIR to product development frameworks, this conversation offers a real look at what it takes to move from prototype to scalable impact.

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00 The AI imaging challenge: why old algorithms break with new camera tech

01:01 RJ's journey co-founding Estenda and the mission behind the company

03:35 From military diabetes programs to federal and global healthcare systems

05:58 Two big challenges: unstructured data and EMR integration bottlenecks

09:00 FHIR vs. MCP: what's next for healthcare data and AI agent protocols

12:26 How Estenda helps R&D teams build, test, and scale medical software

15:39 Real-world AI: diabetic retinopathy imaging and smell testing data repositories

22:28 Advice for teams sitting on valuable data or building digital health products

🔑 Highlights:

• Scaling 100+ AI-assisted retinal cameras for diabetic retinopathy screening 
• Retraining models as imaging tech evolves
• Smell loss linked to 200+ conditions: safety, neuro, chronic disease
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