EP 18 Dr. David Crabb MD, CEO, Rovex Technologies
From Chaos to Coordination: Robotics, Logistics, and the Future of Emergency Care
Guest and Release Date
Guest: David Crabb, MD — CEO and Founder, Rovex Technologies
Release Date: 12/07/25
Episode Summary
What would it take for robots to safely navigate crowded hallways, transport real patients, and support clinical teams inside a busy emergency department? That question sits at the center of this conversation with Dr. David Crabb, an emergency physician, clinical informaticist, and the founder of Rovex Technologies, a company building autonomous patient transport robots designed for real hospital environments. Across this episode we explore how physical AI differs from software based AI, why patient movement is one of the hidden bottlenecks in hospital operations, and how robotics can reduce injuries, relieve overworked staff, and strengthen clinical workflows rather than disrupt them.
Dr. Crabb walks us through his transition from academic informatics to hardware entrepreneurship and explains how a seemingly simple task like moving a patient to CT becomes a systems level challenge. He describes why transport teams face high injury rates, why nurses often shoulder the burden when transport breaks down, and how missed or delayed movement cascades across the entire emergency department. He also outlines why his team focused on a task specific robot instead of a humanoid platform and how digital twin simulation with NVIDIA Omniverse trains the system inside a virtual replica of each hospital before real deployment.
The conversation highlights what safe automation requires in clinical settings, including human oversight, real time patient monitoring, workflow fit, and the need for trust between clinicians and companies. Dr. Crabb also shares concrete lessons about leadership, triage, task switching, and resilience drawn from emergency medicine training that helped shape his path as a founder.
We close by imagining a future where physical AI assists with transport, bedside needs, and routine tasks so nurses and physicians can focus more fully on clinical care. The discussion offers a grounded and forward looking view of what robotics can realistically contribute to emergency medicine in the coming decade.
In This Episode, We Cover
🚚 How patient transport became one of the biggest operational bottlenecks inside emergency departments
🤖 Why physical AI requires a different safety and design approach than software based clinical tools
🏥 How autonomous robots can reduce injuries and workload for transporters and nurses
🛠️ What it takes to design hardware that fits into existing clinical workflows without adding extra steps
🧭 How digital twin simulation trains robots inside virtual replicas of real hospital hallways
⚖️ Why human oversight and patient monitoring remain essential for safe clinical automation
👩⚕️ Lessons from emergency medicine that prepare clinicians to become successful founders
🔮 What hospital logistics may look like by 2035 if physical AI reaches mainstream adoption
Papers Discussed This Episode
Connect with the Guest
Rovex Technologies
David Crabb, MD — LinkedIn
Company site: https://www.rovextech.com/
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