Bringing care back to medicine.

When Dr. Maheshwari's mother had a heart transplant, she lived on both sides of the bedrail for 71 days in the ICU with her mother. She was the doctor who understood what every number on the monitors meant, but was also the family member waiting on the blue vinyl chair for someone to translate what it meant for her mother.

That vantage clarified what she had sensed all along across two continents of clinical practice in three different specialties — that it is rarely the science of medicine that fails patients. Instead, it is the human layer of preventable harm, care fragmentation and communication failures.

Dr. Ayonija Maheshwari, MD, MPH, FANZCA, is a double board-certified practicing anesthesiologist and intensive care physician with a mission to humanize care on both sides of the bedrail. As founder of Humanize the ICU — a grassroots, mission-centered movement — she works to humanize healthcare from bedsides to systems for patients, families, caregivers, clinicians and other healthcare workers.

Her work now sits at that dynamic intersection where thoughtful integration of AI and digital health tools that harmonize healthcare teams can improve the complex and fragmented care, absorb documentation burden and connect information across teams while returning precious time and attention to the bedside.