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Bengaluru: Practo announced the appointment of Cijo George as the Vice President of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on March 3, tasking him to strengthen its healthcare navigation tools, provider tools and platform intelligence as it aims to expand its markets internationally.

Practo to harness its data of patients, doctors, clinics and outcomes collected over 17 years to fuel its AI initiatives, aiming to deliver better results in patient care and enable doctors with actionable insights to enhance patient care. Cijo, a holder of Master’s degree in High Performance Computing from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, has a strong background in AI. With 20 years of experience, he has held senior roles at Observe.ai, Belong.co and was a part of Advanced Technology Group (CTO Office) at NetApp.

AI initiatives like Hippocratic AI and Lumeris have boosted productivity by helping doctors with automated notes, pre-visit preparation and providing patients with proactive, personalized support before, during, and after every visit. For instance, Hippocrate AI handles post-discharge follow-ups and medication checks at scale to combat clinician shortages and burnout, while Lumeris automates administrative tasks like chart prep and care gap closure, reclaiming clinician time for high-touch care.

Echoing this momentum, Shashank ND, co-founder and CEO, Practo said “Cijo brings exceptional depth in building real-world AI platforms, and his belief in using AI to drive meaningful impact strongly resonates with our purpose. We’re excited to have him on board and look forward to building the next phase of Practo’s AI journey together.” Practo has been a global healthcare delivery application dedicated to improving health outcomes. Built on 17 years of healthcare data it enables users to find trusted doctors in more than 2400 cities. This deep data foundation has proven its model successful across India, the Middle East, and the United States.

“Practo operates at unmatched scale and has built deep, longitudinal healthcare data across patients, providers, and outcomes over many years. Combined with its position as a neutral platform across the ecosystem, this creates a powerful foundation to build AI systems that can meaningfully improve health outcomes at scale,” says Cijo. He added he was drawn to Practo to apply AI in directly improving patient care and to help doctors in delivering it efficiently. As Practo continues to strengthen its leadership team investing in long term expansion, it remains an accessible concierge in the world of healthcare connecting users to over 700,000+ doctors and healthcare providers.


Article by:

Kishan SG
School of Communication and Media Studies
St Joseph's University, Bengaluru.


[The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author]