| Intro | Internet celebrity |
| Is |
Video blogger Internet personality YouTuber |
| Type | Internet |
| Gender | male |
ZDoggMD is an internet celebrity known for his music videos, parodies, and comedy sketches about contemporary medical issues and working in the medical field. He is played by Dr. Zubin Damania, CEO and Founder of Las Vegas-based Turntable Health – a new health clinic located in and part of Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project.
ZdoggMD has been featured or interviewed in several medical-based, and other types of well-known publications including The Atlantic Monthly, TechCrunch, Radio Rounds, The Guardian, Mental floss, ReachMD, ScienceBlogs, ACP Hospitalist, and Today’s Hospitalist, among others.
His website won the 2010 Best New Medical Weblog at the 2010 Medical Weblog Awards sponsored by Epocrates and Lenovo.
His videos feature a rotating cast of several characters, also practicing doctors, including, most often, Dr. Harry, a pediatrician, and Doc Quixote, Dr. Diego and others.
He often collaborates musically with Southern California DJ and Producer samix, who produced the album Midriff Music by Josh Martinez which won the category “Best Rap Recording” award at the 2005 Western Canadian Music Awards.
He also currently collaborating with Devin Moore, a composer, bassist in the band “Rabbit!” and member of Downtown Project’s music development team in Las Vegas.
ZdoggMD’s work has been called “entertainment that might save your life”, he has been labeled “the jolliest doctor on the West Coast”, and “a genuine doctor who uses YouTube as a creativity outlet to teach people about things like safe sex, delivering bad news, stayin’ healthy on vacation and hemorrhoids.”
His videos cover topics such as ulcers, testicular exams, Caribbean medical schools, stool transplants, overworked doctors, the role of hospitalists in medicine versus other specialists, vaccine controversies, healthcare in the US, CPR, television doctors, and being on call during the holidays.
History
Zubin Damania grew up in the Central Valley, California, attended UC Berkeley in the early 1990s, and then UCSF Medical School, doing his residency at Stanford University School of Medicine.
His background as a humor-focused doctor is lengthy, giving a notable graduation speech at UCSF which has had tens of thousands of views on YouTube, providing comic videos for a medical website startup called Medschool.com, and performing medical based standup routines for drug companies, hospitals and other medical organizations since the 1990s.
His inspiration to start making videos online again came from his friend Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, who advised him to follow his dreams of being an online comic.
In his videos he has coupled his interest in the human aspect of his patients, and his use of comedy with his treatment and in medicine, with his interest in the Internet, online comedy, and hiphop.
He started his website in part to educate the public via humor about little known or controversial medical issues.