What if the biggest barrier to healthcare AI wasn't the technology, but it was the workforce not yet equipped to use it? Dr. Pavitra Krishnamani is the newly appointed Director of AI and Digital Health Education at MD Anderson Cancer Center and an emergency physician who's been at the intersection of clinical care and digital health innovation for nearly a decade. Her answer to that question is the job she was literally just handed.

Pavitra's path here started in a fellowship at Jefferson, where she was the clinical voice embedded in a team of designers and developers. That team built a VR code blue simulator that was later patented. In one year.

That origin story shaped everything: her belief that getting the right people at the table early, clinicians, developers, designers, (all of them) is what separates innovation that gets translated into real healthcare settings from the ideas that never make it out of the lab.

Episode Key Moment Highlights:

• [00:04:06] The AI and Digital Health Journal Club: how MD Anderson gets clinicians, technologists, and business leaders in the same room to dissect what's actually working — and what isn't.
• [00:05:21] Inside the hackathon: why MD Anderson opened it to residents, fellows, and trainees — because innovation comes from collaboration first, not seniority.
• [00:09:27] The VR patent story: how one fellowship produced a patented VR code blue simulator and a cardiac rehab virtual reality research program.
• [00:16:07] Where healthcare AI is actually delivering ROI today: predictive analytics, clinical decision support, and freeing up human capital to do what AI can't.
• [00:22:04] "Innovate with purpose": Pavitra's call for translational innovation — starting with a problem and a person, not a product.

Pavitra coined a phrase in this conversation I haven't been able to shake: translational innovation. Asking from day one how your solution will actually be adopted, not just whether it works in a lab.

Her work at MD Anderson is building the culture and curriculum to make that the norm.

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