Cijo will lead Practo’s AI charter as the company scales its outcome-driven healthcare platform globally
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, March 2026 – Practo, one of the most trusted digital healthcare platforms globally, today announced the appointment of Cijo George as Vice President of Artificial Intelligence. Cijo joins Practo to lead its AI charter across the platform, working closely with teams across the organization to strengthen how AI is applied to care navigation, provider tools, and platform intelligence. His appointment comes at a pivotal phase for Practo, as the company continues to scale in India while expanding across international markets including the UAE and the United States.
In this role, Cijo will partner with Practo’s 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. He will report 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 ND, Co-founder and CEO, Practo. “AI unlocks 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.”
Cijo brings close to two decades of experience across machine learning, AI platforms, and product-led engineering. Before joining Practo, he held senior leadership roles at Observe.AI, where he worked at the intersection of AI, platform engineering, and product to build large-scale, production-grade AI systems used by global enterprises. Earlier in his career, Cijo 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, where he worked on machine learning and data science approaches for large-scale 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 George, Vice President of AI, Practo. “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.”
With this appointment, Practo continues to strengthen its leadership team as it invests in long-term capabilities across technology, platform depth, and global expansion.
Practo is a global healthcare delivery platform dedicated to improving health outcomes through transparency, aligned incentives, and personalized care. Built on 17 years of structured healthcare data, Practo operates one of the world’s largest care-navigation platforms, enabling millions of patients to discover, book, and complete their healthcare journeys with trusted doctors across 2,400+ cities globally. Its consumer platform functions as a comprehensive doctor discovery, booking, concierge, and fulfillment layer, connecting users to 700,000+ doctors and healthcare providers. Alongside its consumer ecosystem, Practo powers hospitals and clinics through Insta, a full-stack hospital information management system used by over 500 clients across 1,200+ facilities globally. Together, these offerings strengthen clinical decision-making, improve operational efficiency, and support better health outcomes at scale. With a deep data foundation and a proven model across India, the Middle East, and the United States, Practo is building a global healthcare infrastructure designed for trust, accessibility, and measurable impact, bringing its India-built innovation to healthcare systems worldwide.
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