Stasis Labs: Taking care of patients outside ICU
By J Vignesh
BENGALURU: Dinesh Seemakurty was a student at University of Southern California when he watched his grandfather die in a hospital in his home town Kakinada in 2012 because of poor medical care after he was transferred out of the intensive care unit (ICU).
“I then realised that hospitals across India were faced with the same issue. Once you leave the ICU, the nursing care plummets. Simultaneously we also remove technology, and all of a sudden you go from healthcare that is about information and data to healthcare where patients are raising their hands, requesting for help,” said Seemakurty whose startup Stasis Labs has now come up with a cloudpowered vitals monitoring solution. The system consists of a small rectangular box, which monitors vitals such as heart rate, blood oxygen, electrocardiogram, respiratory rate, blood pressure and temperature, and a tablet that streams waveforms and vitals in real time. This can be shared with doctors so that they can remotely take ‘care’ of the patient.
“Our monitor is family and patient friendly. If you see yellow, you call a nurse, green means all is good,” said Seemakurty who joined hands with his classmate Michael Maylahn to launch Stasis Labs in 2015. “We are bridging the gap between doctor and patient,” he said.
The overall technology, as such, is not new, there are already existing solutions to monitor patients outside ICU. But still hospitals do not adopt them. Seemakurty, being a trained emergency medical technician, did a lot of research to understand why it was so.
“In August 2015, I visited 33 hospitals in 35 days across Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai and spoke to CEOs and clinicians. We asked them why they are not doing it (adopting monitoring technology),” he told ET. “Our Initial hypothesis was money, but it was more about manpower. It is about how one nurse can monitor 10 patients together,” he said.
Stasis Labs’ solution has resolved this issue as nurses or clinicians keep getting regular updates on the tablets. If there is any abnormality, the yellow light is a signal — the patient, relatives or nurses could then flag it off.
The Bengaluru and Los Angelesbased startup, which does its hardware manufacturing in Mysuru, raised $5 million in a seed round led by RTP-Healthcare Ventures, the healthcare-focused investment arm of New York based RTP Ventures.
Its solution is presently being adopted in hospitals such as Narayana Health and Cloudnine. The pricing for the solution is yet to be finalised.
“Continuous monitoring of vitals is essential for any hospital that strives to improve their clinical outcomes. Stasis monitors are able to do this without burdening the limited human resources of hospitals and with increased efficiency,” Dr Alben Sigamani, group head of clinical research at Narayana Health, said in an earlier statement.
BENGALURU: Dinesh Seemakurty was a student at University of Southern California when he watched his grandfather die in a hospital in his home town Kakinada in 2012 because of poor medical care after he was transferred out of the intensive care unit (ICU).
“I then realised that hospitals across India were faced with the same issue. Once you leave the ICU, the nursing care plummets. Simultaneously we also remove technology, and all of a sudden you go from healthcare that is about information and data to healthcare where patients are raising their hands, requesting for help,” said Seemakurty whose startup Stasis Labs has now come up with a cloudpowered vitals monitoring solution. The system consists of a small rectangular box, which monitors vitals such as heart rate, blood oxygen, electrocardiogram, respiratory rate, blood pressure and temperature, and a tablet that streams waveforms and vitals in real time. This can be shared with doctors so that they can remotely take ‘care’ of the patient.
“Our monitor is family and patient friendly. If you see yellow, you call a nurse, green means all is good,” said Seemakurty who joined hands with his classmate Michael Maylahn to launch Stasis Labs in 2015. “We are bridging the gap between doctor and patient,” he said.
The overall technology, as such, is not new, there are already existing solutions to monitor patients outside ICU. But still hospitals do not adopt them. Seemakurty, being a trained emergency medical technician, did a lot of research to understand why it was so.
“In August 2015, I visited 33 hospitals in 35 days across Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai and spoke to CEOs and clinicians. We asked them why they are not doing it (adopting monitoring technology),” he told ET. “Our Initial hypothesis was money, but it was more about manpower. It is about how one nurse can monitor 10 patients together,” he said.
Stasis Labs’ solution has resolved this issue as nurses or clinicians keep getting regular updates on the tablets. If there is any abnormality, the yellow light is a signal — the patient, relatives or nurses could then flag it off.
The Bengaluru and Los Angelesbased startup, which does its hardware manufacturing in Mysuru, raised $5 million in a seed round led by RTP-Healthcare Ventures, the healthcare-focused investment arm of New York based RTP Ventures.
Its solution is presently being adopted in hospitals such as Narayana Health and Cloudnine. The pricing for the solution is yet to be finalised.
“Continuous monitoring of vitals is essential for any hospital that strives to improve their clinical outcomes. Stasis monitors are able to do this without burdening the limited human resources of hospitals and with increased efficiency,” Dr Alben Sigamani, group head of clinical research at Narayana Health, said in an earlier statement.
