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MD Anderson Emergency Physician: AI Isn’t Enough Without a Digital Health Ecosystem

Pavitra P. Krishnamani, MD

Emergency Physician;
Medical Director, AI and
Digital Health Education,
The University of Texas MD
Anderson Cancer Center

Pavitra P. Krishnamani is an emergency physician and healthcare innovator who graduated with her MD from Thomas Jefferson University and MS in Global Medicine from Keck School of Medicine of USC. She completed her post-graduate training at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Throughout her career, Dr. Krishnamani has been a thought leader in digital health, speaking at conferences such as Stanford MedXEd, SXSW, and Inventures. An established subject matter expert in digital health, she is writing a book on digital health transformation that is expected to publish in early 2026.

Dr. Krishnamani’s journey in digital health and human centered design began while she was in medical school. In 2018, she completed her Clinical Fellowship in Healthcare Innovation at Jefferson’s Digital Innovation and Consumer Experience group (DICE), where she served as the clinical voice in a team of designers and developers aiming to improve patient care. There, she provided critical input into the clinical viability of projects leveraging AI and other digital health technologies and spearheaded DICE’s AR/VR initiatives, leading research and product development in this space.

Since then, Dr. Krishnamani has been involved in multiple projects exploring the digital health ecosystem and has been the clinical voice in evaluating startup pitches and grant proposals for the NSF-NIH SmartHealth program. She currently serves as affiliate faculty at the Institute for Data Science in Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center and Chair of MD Anderson’s AI and Digital Health GME Subcommittee. Nationally, she serves on the American College of Emergency Physicians’ Health Innovation & Technology Committee. A strong clinician, she also serves as a Texas Leadership and Advocacy Fellow and on the board of the Texas College of Emergency Physicians.

In global health, Pavitra has consulted on a UNICEF-funded project in India and worked with a WHO collaborating center in Italy. Her practical experience lies in refugee health and she has previously served as Vice President and later Clinic Director for Jefferson’s refugee community acute care clinics. She was inducted into the Carson Scholars Twenty Under Thirty for her work empowering refugees.

Passionate about education, Pavitra continues to publish, present, and give interviews on her work in healthcare innovation and global health. To learn more about her work, please visit http://pavitramd.com/

MD Anderson Emergency Physician: AI Isn’t Enough Without a Digital Health Ecosystem

In this episode of Bright Spots in Healthcare, recorded live at the ViVE 2026 conference, Eric Glazer sits down with Dr. Pavitra Krishnamani from MD Anderson Cancer Center to explore what it actually takes to build scalable digital health systems.

As both a practicing emergency physician and digital health innovator, Dr. Krishnamani brings a frontline perspective to one of healthcare’s biggest challenges: why so many digital health tools fail to scale, and what separates technologies that succeed from those that don’t.

While the industry continues to invest heavily in AI, wearables, telehealth, and other digital tools, many health systems are still struggling with fragmented solutions, low adoption, and limited real-world impact. The path forward isn’t more tools, it’s better systems.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why workflow integration matters more than features in digital health adoption
How AI, wearables, telehealth, VR, and EHRs must work together as a connected ecosystem
What health systems should evaluate before bringing in new technology, including ROI, maintenance, and unintended consequences
The role of human-centered design in building solutions clinicians will actually use
Why adoption fails without clinician buy-in, flexibility, and cultural alignment
How to design more effective pilots and avoid common implementation pitfalls
Why education and mindset are critical to scaling AI and digital health
What it takes to move from siloed tools to scalable, system-level transformation

Pavitra P. Krishnamani, MD

Emergency Physician;
Medical Director, AI and
Digital Health Education,
The University of Texas MD
Anderson Cancer Center

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