Practo At Practo, we have always believed that technology, when built with purpose, can meaningfully improve health outcomes. As we continue to scale our outcome-driven healthcare platform across India and expand globally into markets such as the United Arab Emirates and the United States, we are deepening our investments in Artificial Intelligence to power the next phase of healthcare innovation.
Today, we’re excited to share that Cijo George has joined Practo as Vice President of Artificial Intelligence. In this role, Cijo will lead Practo’s AI charter across our platform strengthening how AI is applied to care navigation, provider tools, and platform intelligence. He will work closely with our product, engineering, and clinical teams to further integrate AI into how patients discover and access care, and how providers deliver care with greater accuracy, reliability, and consistency at scale.
Cijo will report directly to Shashank ND, Co-founder and CEO at Practo.
“For the last 17 years, we have been building deep healthcare intelligence across patients, doctors, clinics, and outcomes,” said Shashank. “AI helps us unlock the full potential of this data, helping patients get better outcomes and enabling doctors with insights that can genuinely improve care delivery. 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.”
Why AI, Why Now
Over nearly two decades, we have built one of the most comprehensive healthcare data foundations across patients, providers, and outcomes. As a neutral platform operating across the healthcare ecosystem, we are uniquely positioned to apply AI in ways that are responsible, scalable, and outcomes-focused.
AI at Practo is not about experimentation for its own sake. It is about:
- Helping patients navigate care with clarity and confidence
- Enabling doctors with deeper, contextual insights
- Driving consistency and reliability in care delivery
- Strengthening decision-making across our platform
Cijo’s appointment marks a pivotal step in accelerating this vision.
Cijo’s Experience in Building AI at Scale
Cijo brings close to two decades of experience across machine learning, AI platforms, and product-led engineering.
Prior to joining Practo, he held senior leadership roles at Observe.AI, where he built large-scale, production-grade AI systems used by global enterprises. Earlier, he led Platform & AI at Belong.co, focusing on search and personalization in the HR technology domain, and was part of the Advanced Technology Group (CTO Office) at NetApp, working on machine learning and data science approaches for distributed systems.
He holds a Master’s degree in High Performance Computing from the Indian Institute of Science.
“What drew me to Practo is the opportunity to apply AI in ways that can directly improve how patients experience care and how doctors deliver it,” said Cijo. “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, and I’m excited to contribute to that journey.”
Building the Future of Global Healthcare
As we continue to invest in long-term capabilities across technology, platform depth, and global expansion, strengthening our AI leadership is a critical part of our roadmap.
For 17 years, we have focused on improving transparency, aligning incentives, and delivering personalized care. With AI deeply integrated into our platform, we are accelerating our mission to make healthcare more accessible, intelligent, and outcome-driven not just in India, but globally.
To know more about Cijo, check out the link below:
