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India has a massive shortage of trained ICU doctors (or intensivists) for a population of 1.4 billion people. According to the ISCCM (a society of critical care medicine) report, there are more than 3,00,000 ICU beds across India, but only 5,000 intensivists manage these.

To bridge the gap between the demand for high-quality critical care and the shortage of qualified intensivists, Dr Dhruv Joshi along with Dr Dileep Raman started Cloudphysician Healthcare in 2017.

The healthtech startup is a full-stack AI and operations company that partners with hospitals to handle patients in their intensive care units (ICUs) and emergency departments.

“Access to quality critical care cannot be solved with just a digital platform or hiring an ICU consultant. Rather, it needs a holistic solution combining both clinical expertise and technology tailored to the respective hospital environment,” says Joshi.

Cloudphysician has partnered with over 200 hospitals across 23 states in the country, including metros, Tier II, and Tier III cities. ​​It claims to have helped manage care for over one lakh ICU patients since its inception. 

With Singapore as its headquarters, Cloudphysician currently has offices in Singapore and Bengaluru. 

Starting Cloudphysician

Both Joshi and Raman, who are pulmonary and critical care specialists from the American Board of Internal Medicine, met while they were in the US. The duo did their super specialisation in lung disease and ICU care in the US. 

Joshi says he and Raman witnessed the best that modern technology and medicine had to offer to patients at the Cleveland Clinic. While it is an innovation and research-focused hospital, it would just be impossible to build that in every district in India because it’s very expensive and hard to replicate.

“We wanted to get that excellence within the reach of people all across the world. And we wanted to start at home in India, where we knew the ecosystem, where we knew the challenges, and that’s when we came back to India to start Cloudphysician,” he adds.

Delivering critical care virtually

Cloudphysician has developed a tech solution that makes high-quality ICU care available to patients anywhere in the country at any point in time.

The startup does so by using its AI-enhanced platform ‘Radar’, which converts already installed hospital ICUs and emergency rooms into Smart ICUs. 

High-definition cameras are installed on the ICU beds, which will provide 24/7, real-time recommendations to doctors present in the hospitals to make sure they’re giving the right treatment to patients who are dealing with life-threatening illness.

A team of highly-trained doctors and nurses monitor the patients virtually from the care centre in Bengaluru and look at the data that flows from 1000s of ICU beds from across India, and then make decisions based on that data. 

“What we do is get all of this data through our AI-enabled platform, and that data is then used by our superspecialists and our ICU nurses who are in our care centre, 24/7,” adds Raman.

Basically, Cloudphysician analyses patient data remotely and helps doctors working in other cities and towns make clinical decisions. 

Cloudphysician’s smart-ICU management system can virtually amplify the reach of intensivists to 5X the number of patients hospitals could have managed with conventional models, explain the founders. 

The startup provides these services to anyone who requires to be admitted to an ICU, including premature babies who need to be in a neonatal ICU (NICU).

Cloudphysician has a robust team of nearly 250 members. However, its strength lies in its clinical expertise, with about 140 critical care doctors and nurses.

“With technology at the core of our healthcare delivery, a dedicated tech team of 40 members works closely with the clinical team to solve real healthcare delivery problems,” adds Raman.

All the critical care doctors and nurses working with Cloudphysician are appointed full-time.

Market opportunities and way ahead

Cloudphysician’s model is quite prevalent in the US, but outside of the US, it is the largest company globally doing this, says Joshi.

The startup claims to be the first mover in the space in India, which has about 50,000 hospitals. It currently works with over 200 hospitals in India, including some prominent hospitals like SGPGI in Lucknow, Motherhood Hospitals, HCG, and Cytecare. 

In the last one year, Cloudphysician has expanded its hospital network by nearly 2.5x. 

Speaking about the pricing model, Raman says, “Cloudphysician’s pricing model is tailored to address the unique requirements of each hospital. We customise our solutions and pricing on factors such as the required level of care, occupancy, and more. This approach ensures that hospitals only pay for the services that they need.”

Overall, the startup has raised $16 million in funding to date. In June this year, the company raised $10.5 million in a Series A round led by Peak XV Partners.

“Tele-ICU critical care is the solution that India needs to adopt to drop mortality rates across India’s medium-sized hospitals in Tier II/III cities. This tech needs to be able to integrate with existing systems available at these hospitals, at a cost that is palatable – Cloudphysican delivers exactly this,” said Mohit Bhatnagar, MD, Peak XV.

“Cloudphysician has proven that it can drop mortality rates across Indian ICUs with highly trained intensivists and proprietary computer vision technology.  The technology can make a huge impact at scale and that’s why we chose to partner with them,” he adds.

Going forward, the startup said it will primarily focus on three things—firstly, to scale its presence in India. Secondly, to further develop its AI-enhanced technology platform Radar, which is the copilot system that helps doctors and nurses. And third is for international expansion. 

Cloudphysician is aiming to expand globally into new markets such as the US, SE Asia, and the Middle East.