Designing for Health: Interview with Lalita Abhyankar, MD

The job requirements of a physician are so much more than what’s learned in medical school. In this modern, connected technological environment, skillsets must include digital know-how, emotional intelligence, data management, and even the basic concepts behind software development. While the electronic health records (EHR) environment has led to a massive increase of data, learning and understanding what to do with that information can be the biggest day-to-day challenge of clinicians. All too often, knowledge gaps can persist and even widen without innovation and education, a dynamic that has exponentially increased since 2020.

On this episode Nordic Chief Medical Officer Craig Joseph, MD, chats with Lalita Abhyankar, MD, family physician and clinic medical director at Carbon Health. They discuss her medical background, the evolving mission of Carbon Health, and her journey in understanding change management. They also discuss the emotions behind clinical care, the similarities and differences between primary care and urgent care, and how doctors can think more like engineers while still maintaining and growing relationships with their patients.

You can find complete show notes on the originally published article on Nordic’s blog.

Meet the Host

Craig Joseph, MD

Chief Medical Officer
LinkedIn: Craig Joseph MD, FAAP, FAMIA
X: @CraigJoseph
Read his articles

Dr. Joseph is the Chief Medical Officer of Nordic Consulting Partners, a global healthcare management consulting firm. Craig has 30 years of healthcare and IT experience. In addition to practicing medicine as a primary care pediatrician for eight years, he worked for Epic for six-plus years and has served as chief medical information officer at multiple healthcare organizations, using both Cerner and Epic.

Craig is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Medical Informatics Association. He remains actively board-certified in both pediatrics and clinical informatics.

About the Show

When it comes to how healthcare works in the U.S., one wonders, who designed it? Well, no one. And that’s the problem. Dr. Craig Joseph speaks with luminaries from across the health ecosystem about how to make healthcare work for humans. The upshot? The way out of the frustrating, expensive, and frequently ineffective quagmire of the U.S. healthcare system is to take a step back and bring intentional, human-centered design to an ecosystem that works for the people giving and receiving care.

Follow the show’s social hashtag #DesigningforHealth.