Stasis Labs: A vital venture

Stasis Labs, a two-year-old start-up with a solution to monitor vital signs, is enabling more data-driven healthcare organisations to spur more informed clinical decisions and plug gaps in the current healthcare system, finds Lakshmipriya Nair

Stasis Labs, a cloud-powered health monitoring company, set up by Dinesh Seemakurty and Michael Maylahn, young entrepreneurs and co-alumni of University of Southern California, has been in the news for all the right reasons.  Its vital signs monitoring system has caught the interest of investors and healthcare providers alike. The solution has been installed in leading healthcare facilities like Narayana Healthcare and Cloudnine in Bangalore. The company received $5 million funding last year from a set of investors led by RTP-Healthcare Ventures, the healthcare – focused investment arm of RTP Ventures. Wonder Ventures, Techstars Ventures, were some of the others who participated in this round of funding. TechEmerge’, a World Bank Group initiative to bring together startups and bigger corporations on to a single platform and forge partnerships has also endorsed the technology.

Serving an unmet need

So, what makes it so interesting? Its ability to a provide an effective solution to the grave problem of under monitored beds in hospitals through effective use of technology at affordable costs. Reportedly, only 25 per cent hospital beds in India are continuously monitored vis-à-vis 50-70 per cent in matured markets. In fact, the demise of his beloved grandfather due to inadequate monitoring of vital signs led Seemakurty to develop a solution to this serious concern and Stasis Labs was set up.

Designed in collaboration with the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, Stasis’ vitals monitoring solution, combines custom hardware with a tablet-based patient chart and an online patient portal to monitor six key patient vitals continuously – heart rate, SPO2, three-lead ECG, respiratory rate, non-invasive BP, and temperature. Integrated with an online dashboard, the system collects and presents data in an easily interpreted format to facilitate clinical decisions based on patient vitals trends.

Improving clinical outcomes

Seemakurty elaborates on the solution and states, “Stasis was designed to seamlessly integrate with existing clinical workflows. Clinical staff are often too busy to make large changes into their workflow; thus, Stasis was careful to only change the right elements. The Stasis Monitor automatically records patient’s vital signs without causing unnecessary stress in the patient room through a simple iconic display. The Stasis Tablet saves nurses time by avoiding manual documentation of those patient records. The Stasis Dashboard ensures that clinicians can check up on their patients from anywhere rather than having to call up a nurse to ensure the patient is stable. In a single integrated system, Stasis allows hospitals to go from no monitoring to fully cloud connected monitoring overnight.”

Thus, in a country like India that faces a severe scarcity of manpower and beds in the healthcare sector, Stasis’ solution for continuous monitoring can reduce the average length in the hospitals for patients and reduce ICU transfers, thereby helping to speeden up the treatment process and boost the quality of healthcare delivery.

Seemakurty points out, “The Indian healthcare system is limited by a shortage of skilled doctors and nurses for the quantity of patients. This, paired with the lack of accessibility to technology solutions, results in sub-par care for patients who are at risk. Stasis solves this issue with an internet connected monitoring system that allows doctors and nurses to treat more patients with less effort and less time. By making India’s existing personnel more efficient without a burden to their workflow, Stasis will have a significant impact on clinical outcomes in the country.”

He further informs, “The Stasis Monitoring System is live across multiple hospitals in Bangalore including the reputed Narayana Health and CloudNine Maternity Hospital. We have been able to successfully catch patient deterioration and ensured that patients are able to leave the hospital sooner and with increased clinician confidence.”

Affordability: A key advantage

Seemakurty also highlights that it is an affordable solution, a key advantage in a country like India. He says, “From the beginning, the goal of Stasis was to provide patients across the world with access to continuous monitoring. By manufacturing our product in India, we are able to provide fast and reliable service to our customers. Stasis was also built around the latest technologies, allowing us to keep our costs down and pass on those low costs to our hospital partners. With Stasis, hospitals are able treat more patients with less time, allowing them to reduce overall healthcare costs while maintaining profitability.”

He further states, “As hospitals are transforming into more data driven organisations, they require data to be collected in many more aspects than just billing and occupancy. Stasis provides data on the quality of patient care along with business analytics information regarding the usage and occupancy on a significantly more minute level within the facility. We focus not only on providing data to the hospitals, but also providing actionable information about how they can improve their key metrics like average length of stay and average revenue per occupied bed.”

In times to come

Seemakurty informs, “We have seen strong adoption for our product with all of our hospital partners and we believe we can become one of the largest players in the health monitoring across India in just a few years. As more patients expect hospitals to provide continuous monitoring, Stasis will become a status quo.”

Thus, the founders are very optimistic of growth and feel that in a scenario where hospitals have to become data driven, technology companies like Stasis are going to be pivotal to ensure progress. Hence, it has charted out an ambitious growth strategy for itself. After consolidating its position in Bangalore, the company aims to penetrate into other tier-I metros across India such as Delhi and Mumbai. Within the next three years, the plan is to to have pan – India coverage with strong penetration into tier-II and tier-III markets.

“The new funds allow us to continuously improve our solution for our customers rather than focusing on just selling the product as it is today. We are able to receive input from the hundreds of doctors and nurses that touch our product every day and integrate them into updates that get rolled out to every hospital in the Stasis network. By listening to our customers, we can create the best product to solve their problem. By solving their problem, we can easily scale across the country,” outlines Seemakurty.

In times to come, as sustainability has emerged as key to any start-up’ s success, it would be interesting to trace Stasis Labs’ strategems to stay relevant and viable as it embarks on a growth trajectory.

lakshmipriya.nair@expressindia.com