Smitha Ganeshan, MD, MBA
Assistant Professor
Medicine
School of Medicine
Smitha Ganeshan, MD, MBA is a hospitalist and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Divisions of Hospital Medicine and Clinical Informatics and Digital Transformation at the University of California, San Francisco. As a hospitalist, she cares for patients across a range of inpatient medical services and is focused on improving care delivery, quality, and safety.
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Dr. Ganeshan serves as the Medical Director for AI Programs at UCSF, where she oversees the health system’s clinical AI portfolio. In this role, she partners closely with the Chief AI Officer to define vision and strategy, evaluate and implement AI solutions, and cultivate key external partnerships. She works with cross-functional teams in IT, data science, informatics, and operations to deploy AI tools that drive value at scale while supporting safety, equity, and clinician experience.
She also serves as Strategy Lead for Informatics, leading efforts to improve physician satisfaction with the electronic health record (EHR). Her current work includes redesigning UCSF Health IT processes for prioritizing and completing user-generated enhancement requests to create a more transparent, user-centered experience. Her research focuses on the implementation and impact of AI tools on clinical outcomes, clinician experience, and health equity.
Previously, Dr. Ganeshan held roles in Digital Innovation and served as Medical Director for the Medicine Unit-Based Leadership Team across inpatient medicine units at Parnassus.
Dr. Ganeshan received her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Georgia and her medical and business degrees from Harvard University. She completed her Internal Medicine residency at UCSF before joining the faculty at UCSF’s Parnassus campus.
Education & Training
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- MBA Management Harvard Business School 06/2019
- MD Medicine Harvard Medical School 06/2019
- BS Biology University of Georgia 05/2014
Websites
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- Posts on X @SmithaGaneshan (X.com)
Publications (14)
Top publication keywords:
Cardiac RehabilitationDecision MakingPatient Discharge SummariesWalk TestPatient Care TeamOutpatientsPalliative CarePatient-Centered CareCapital FinancingMyocardial InfarctionPatient PortalsPatient Care PlanningNarrationTelemedicineElectronic Health Records
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Physician- and Large Language Model-Generated Hospital Discharge Summaries.
JAMA internal medicine 2025 Williams CYK, Subramanian CR, Ali SS, Apolinario M, Askin E, Barish P, Cheng M, Deardorff WJ, Donthi N, Ganeshan S, Huang O, Kantor MA, Lai AR, Manchanda A, Moore KA, Muniyappa AN, Nair G, Patel PP, … -
Impact of COVID-19 on Characteristics and Funding of U.S. Healthcare Startups: Retrospective Review.
JMIR formative research 2024 Ganeshan S, Goldstein J, Sohn YJ, Pollack A, Phillips RS, Rotenstein L -
An Electronic Health Record-Based Automated Self-Rescheduling Tool to Improve Patient Access: Retrospective Cohort Study.
Journal of medical Internet research 2024 Ganeshan S, Liu AW, Kroeger A, Anand P, Seefeldt R, Regner A, Vaughn D, Odisho AY, Mourad M -
Impact of an automated peri-procedural digital health intervention on rates of emergency department visits and readmissions.
American journal of surgery 2023 Liu AW, Pierce L, Ganeshan S, Brown W, Judson T, Divakaran D, Bini S, Odisho AY, Mourad M -
Training Physicians in the Digital Health Era: How to Leverage the Residency Elective.
JMIR medical education 2023 Hsiang EY, Ganeshan S, Patel S, Yurkovic A, Parekh A
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Impact of patient portal-based self-scheduling of diagnostic imaging studies on health disparities.
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA 2022 Ganeshan S, Pierce L, Mourad M, Judson TJ, Kohli MD, Odisho AY, Brown W -
An unexpected turn: A 71-year-old man with myocardial infarction.
Cleveland Clinic journal of medicine 2022 Ganeshan S, Kelemen B, Dhaliwal G, Zier L -
Clinical Outcomes and Qualitative Perceptions of In-person, Hybrid, and Virtual Cardiac Rehabilitation.
Journal of cardiopulmonary rehabilitation and prevention 2022 Ganeshan S, Jackson H, Grandis DJ, Janke D, Murray ML, Valle V, Beatty AL -
Impact of a resident and student-led video visitation navigation program.
BMC medical education 2022 Yang R, Ganeshan S, Thompson A, McAllister S, Mourad M -
Reimagining the inpatient palliative care consult: lessons from COVID-19.
The American journal of managed care 2021 Ganeshan S, Humphreys J, Judson T -
Medical Communities Go Virtual.
Journal of hospital medicine 2021 Minter DJ, Patel A, Ganeshan S, Nematollahi S -
Enabling patient communication for hospitalised patients during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
BMJ innovations 2021 Ganeshan S, Hsiang E, Peng T, Thomas N, Garcia-Grossman I, Javaherian K, Lyon Z, Vidyarthi A -
Shared care planning: Realizing the promise of team-based person-centered care.
Healthcare (Amsterdam, Netherlands) 2018 Ganeshan S, Gheihman G, Palmor M, Choi S, Wohler D, Rotenstein LS -
The Effect of Price Information on the Ordering of Images and Procedures.
Pediatrics 2017 Chien AT, Ganeshan S, Schuster MA, Lehmann LS, Hatfield LA, Koplan KE, Petty CR, Sinaiko AD, Sequist TD, Rosenthal MB