Samridh Blended Finance Facility Commits Rs 3.2 CR to Setup Tele-Icus

The SAMRIDH Healthcare Blended Financing Facility has committed INR 3.2 crore (USD 400K) to Critical Care Hope to assist in the expansion of its tech-enabled hub-and-spoke Tele-ICU platform, which enables healthcare providers in tier 2 and 3 cities to provide critical care services.

The ‘Tele-ICU’ platform is a cutting-edge model that enables an intensivist (a certified critical care physician) to actively manage the needs of 60-80 ICU patients across multiple locations while being monitored from a remote command centre. An intensivist is required at the patient’s bedside in a typical hospital scenario, and thus can only manage 10-12 patients.

Critical Care Hope hopes to bring 12 partner hospitals in tier 2 and 3 towns in Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh on board to provide critical care services.

“India’s uneven urban-rural distribution of health infrastructure and workforce, with a heavy bias towards the urban cities, has been a critical roadblock in delivering equitable healthcare services,” said Himanshu Sikka, Project Director, SAMRIDH and Chief Strategy and Diversification Officer, IPE Global.

SAMRIDH

SAMRIDH’s collaboration with Critical Care Hope reflects our ongoing commitment to supporting impact-driven businesses and scaling market-based solutions to address the complex and inherent challenges of health systems. We hope to achieve timely intervention of critical care experts for patients in tier 2, 3 and rural areas where there are currently few or no tertiary care centres through this collaboration.”

Critical Care Hope – “Guardian Angels of ICU” – is bringing tertiary-level medical expertise to remote locations by forming a network of partner hospitals to provide the ‘Right Care’ to the ‘Right Patient’ at the ‘Right Time’. The proposed hub and spoke model will establish dedicated command centres known as HOPES (Health Outcomes Focused Preventions and Evaluation System), each of which will serve as a centralised management (hub) for patients in remote locations who require critical care (spokes).

The HOPES hubs will bring together ICU specialists, advanced medical technologies, expertise, and local hospitals on a single platform to monitor patients 24 hours a day, collect and analyse data, and provide protocolled care and treatment interventions. Clinical tools and automated alerts provide real-time patient data and actionable insights, allowing for faster decision-making.

“The issue with our healthcare system is that we face significant challenges in bridging the urban-semi-urban-rural healthcare divide,” said Dr. Shailesh Jhawar, Founder and Director of Critical Care Hope. To bridge these gaps and provide value-based solutions to underserved areas, technological innovations in healthcare are required. We will be able to scale our operations and continue to innovate and provide last-mile clinical services with the help of SAMRIDH.

With only 90,000 ICU beds for a population of 1.3 billion, a large portion of India’s population lacks access to proper critical care facilities. Furthermore, the country’s 5000 trained intensivists are mostly concentrated in large tertiary care centres in urban areas, which means that patients in need of critical care must be rushed to tier 1 metropolitans or cities. It is estimated that 10% of patients die while in transit. Furthermore, the significant logistical challenges and treatment delays may result in wage loss for the patient and their family.