Vijay Yanamadala

About Vijay Yanamadala

Vijay Yanamadala is a neurosurgeon and healthcare executive at Hartford HealthCare, where he serves as Vice Chairman of Neurosurgery and System Medical Director of Quality, Innovation & Research at the Ayer Neuroscience Institute. He specializes in complex and revision spine surgery and pioneered awake spinal fusion in Connecticut.

Beyond the operating room, Vijay works at the intersection of clinical medicine, health systems leadership, and emerging technology. He writes and speaks widely on how artificial intelligence, incentive structures, and institutional culture shape the care patients receive — and the care they don't. His work spans the design of safer, more equitable healthcare systems; the responsible adoption of AI in clinical settings; and the obligation of physicians to engage public discourse rather than retreat into the clinic. He believes that the most consequential failures in American healthcare are not technical but structural — and that fixing them requires voices from inside medicine willing to name them plainly. He is a regular contributor to Becker's Spine Review and has published more than 95 peer-reviewed articles and co-authored two medical textbooks.

Born in Dallas, Texas to parents who emigrated from India, Vijay received his BA and MA from Harvard University, his MD from Harvard Medical School through the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, and his MBA from Harvard Business School. He completed his neurosurgery residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and a complex spine fellowship at Virginia Mason Medical Center. He is a Fellow of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

Vijay lives in Connecticut with his wife, Dr. Vidya Puthenpura, a pediatric neuro-oncologist at Yale, and their two children.