Doctor-on-cloud: How AI is redefining critical and chronic care in India

As India continues to grapple with limited doctor availability and unequal access to quality care, artificial intelligence is transforming how patients are diagnosed, treated, and monitored—from intensive care units to long-term chronic care.

At TechSparks 2025, India’s biggest startup-tech conference, a panel of healthtech innovators discussed how AI can bridge this divide and make affordable, high-quality care accessible to every corner of Bharat.

The session, titled “Doctor-on-Cloud: Role of AI in Critical to Chronic Care,” brought together Ankur Jain, Co-founder of Jivi AI; Laina Emmanuel, Co-founder and CEO of BrainSightAI; and Dhruv Joshi, Co-founder and Global CEO of Cloudphysician.

From reimagining critical care through cloud-based command centres to decoding the human brain with AI, the panel explored how intelligent, scalable solutions are redefining the future of healthcare in India.

Ankur Jain, Co-founder and CEO of Jivi AI, explained how his company is building what he calls an “AI doctor.” The startup caters to over 2.5 million users across 200 countries.

“People today are surrounded by health data—from smart rings to watches—but they don’t know what to do with it,” said Jain. “What they need is intelligence that can connect the dots. That’s where Jivi AI comes in—a super-intelligent layer on top of personal health data that predicts what’s going to happen next in your health.”

By turning scattered health metrics into actionable insights, Jivi AI aims to shift healthcare from being reactive to proactive, empowering users to track, understand, and prevent health issues.

Laina Emmanuel, Co-founder and CEO of BrainSightAI, is working on the human brain.

“At BrainSightAI, we do advanced brain mapping. We’re in a very niche space, one of only three companies in the world doing this kind of work,” said Emmanuel. “What excites me most is seeing AI solve hard clinical problems that have long had no solution.”

Her company focuses on conditions where traditional medicine still struggles, including those in psychiatry, which lacks clear biomarkers; dementia, where early diagnosis remains elusive; and neurosurgery, where functional brain mapping is a challenge for most patients.

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“The fact that AI can create imaging-based markers for psychiatry or help identify dementia early is incredibly heartening,” she added. “Doctors can now use these insights to guide patients more effectively, especially in areas that were once impossible to measure.”

Meanwhile, Dhruv Joshi, Co-founder and Global CEO of Cloudphysician, is using AI to transform how hospitals deliver care in real-time.

“I’m a physician myself—a pulmonologist and ICU doctor,” said Joshi. “After working in the US for several years, I returned to India eight years ago to start Cloudphysician with one goal: to help hospitals and patients get better care inside the hospital.”

“In healthcare, context is everything,” he explained. “Unlike math or coding, where a variable has a fixed meaning, one symptom in medicine can have ten different causes. A heart rate of 120 could mean pain, movement, anxiety, or a breathing problem—and each requires a completely different response.”

To bring that missing context into hospital settings, Cloudphysician has built AI-powered video agents that continuously monitor patients.

“Our AI agent uses a camera to understand what’s happening with the patient in real time — whether they’re in pain, having trouble breathing, or simply moving,” Joshi said. “That context allows doctors to make better, faster decisions—something that isn’t always possible when a human caregiver can’t be at every bedside 24x7.”

The startup blends clinical expertise with AI’s constant vigilance to give patients continuous attention.

“Video, in particular, is an incredibly rich medium,” Joshi added. “A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand pictures. It gives you real context about what’s happening with a patient—something no other data stream can offer.”

Building AI responsibly

As AI takes on more critical roles in diagnosis and decision-making, the question of responsibility becomes central.

“There are always going to be people who self-diagnose. Before AI, they were using Google or WebMD,” said Jain. “But we have to give consumers more credit. They’re intelligent; they usually know when to seek professional help.”

Jivi AI, he explained, has built strict safeguards to ensure users don’t act on unverified medical advice. “Even though users can ask AI health questions, we never push them to take direct action—like taking a supplement or medication—without human oversight. The doctor must always stay in the loop,” he asserted.

While AI will eventually become more autonomous, Jain believes human judgement must remain central.

“Five years from now, we may see systems that can run on autopilot, but doctors will still be in control and able to intervene when needed,” he said. “That’s why we’re investing heavily in safety infrastructure—from internal audits to real-time monitoring—to ensure every AI interaction remains responsible and trustworthy.”

Addressing the risks and opportunities of AI in healthcare, Joshi said the technology could help solve what he calls the “iron triangle” of healthcare.

“In healthcare, we’ve always struggled with a trade-off between three things: access, cost, and quality. Improve one, and the other two usually suffer,” he explained. “If you enhance quality, costs go up. If you expand access, quality drops. Every health system in the world faces this dilemma. But for the first time, AI gives us a real chance to break this triangle.”

He added that while AI’s potential is immense, it must be accompanied by strong safeguards, especially around patient privacy. “In our work, we use ambient video cameras in hospital rooms to monitor patients in real time. Naturally, this raises privacy concerns. That’s why we’ve built stringent guardrails to ensure security and consent are never compromised.”

Joshi also reflected on India’s evolving healthcare ecosystem, particularly the payer–provider dynamic.

“Right now, most healthcare spending in India is still out of pocket, which often leads to misaligned incentives—more tests, more procedures, not always more value,” he said. “As insurance coverage expands year after year, that alignment is improving. It creates checks and balances that promote better, more rational care. It’s a sign that the system is maturing in the right direction.”