Less than 2% of patients facing cardiac surgery get a second opinion before their operation. Those who do often wait weeks, see a single physician affiliated with the same hospital system, and receive an opinion that may carry the same institutional biases as the first.
Meanwhile, 37% of expert second opinions change the original diagnosis or treatment plan. For the highest-stakes decisions in medicine — whether to open someone's chest — the system has accepted a dangerously low standard of due diligence.
WhiteGloveMD was founded by Rahul R. Handa, MD — a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon who spent decades operating on hearts and saw firsthand how the system fails patients at their most vulnerable moment.
He built WhiteGloveMD to be the platform he wished existed for his own patients: AI-powered clinical analysis, dual-physician Heart Team review, STS-benchmarked surgeon matching, and complete independence from any hospital system. The platform is, in his words, "my brain on paper" — decades of surgical judgment encoded into technology.
Cardiac surgery is the beachhead, not the ceiling. WhiteGloveMD's Clintelligence™ engine — a proprietary AI platform — is designed to expand into every high-stakes surgical specialty: neurosurgery, thoracic oncology, vascular surgery, and beyond. Same engine, new clinical domain configurations. Every case makes the next one smarter. Every Wing feeds the others.