Healthcare desperately needs more clinicians, but can’t scale up fast enough. Traditional medical training demands thousands of hours of supervised, hands-on practice and struggles to prepare today’s workforce for modern challenges – especially the management of chronic diseases.
SimCare AI has raised $2 million in seed funding to rethink clinical training from first principles: using AI patients to bypass regulatory constraints and certify clinical skills with far fewer patient interactions.
The funding round was led by Y Combinator and Drive Capital, with participation from Harper Court Ventures Fund, Singularity Capital, Triple S Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Asymmetry Ventures, Sand Hill North, and Transpose Platform.
The story began with a problem: when founder Vrishank Saini failed a critical clinical communications exam and couldn’t afford the $9,000 tutor fee, he got together with Tigran Bdoyan and built an AI solution instead.
The tool worked so well that it attracted 2,500 users and reached $5,000 in monthly recurring revenue within three weeks.
After an initial rejection from Y Combinator’s S24 batch, Saini and his co-founder Bdoyan dropped out of college with no funding, moved to San Francisco, and – when told they couldn’t reapply to the same batch – created new email accounts and applied again.
Y Combinator caught them but, impressed by their determination, gave them $500,000 to build SimCare AI.
“We took a risk to prove our point,” said Vrishank Saini, CEO and Co-founder of SimCare AI. “By using AI patients, we’ve set a clinical benchmark for how training should be measured – efficient, reliable, and cost-effective. Current training methods excel at teaching acute conditions but fall short with chronic diseases that develop over months and years. A medication change today might not show its impact for months, and missed interventions might not reveal their consequences for years. SimCare AI’s simulations compress these timelines dramatically, allowing clinicians to witness disease progression patterns that would traditionally take years to experience.”
The SimCare AI platform can be customized for different specialities and use cases, from residency programs preparing trainees for complex patient scenarios to social work programs practising family interventions.
Telehealth companies, for example, screen job applicants by testing their skills with SimCare AI patients, enabling faster and more cost-effective hiring.
The platform also supports their onboarding, training, upskilling, and remediation without the prolonged timelines and high expenses of traditional training.
For healthcare organizations, being able to benchmark and predict performance of their workforce will offer employers an advantage. Currently, SimCare AI has already closed 30 pilots with institutions including the University of Pennsylvania.
The innovation comes at a crucial moment. As seasoned physicians leave the profession while less experienced clinicians backfill positions, the clinical experience gap is widening.
Traditional training methods – role-playing, in-person evaluations, and one-on-one interviews – cost institutions hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in faculty time and administrative overhead, while still failing to provide comprehensive exposure to complex patient cases.
Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Psychiatry, University of North Carolina Douglas A. Drossman MD, President at DrossmanCare commented: “I have been extremely impressed with our collaboration with SimCare AI. At DrossmanCare, in partnership with the Rome Foundation, we develop educational programs designed to enhance healthcare providers’ communication skills with patients. SimCare AI has seamlessly integrated our vast library of publications and videos on communication into an innovative program that allows providers to engage in advanced, simulated patient interviews with a virtual avatar.
“This approach enables providers to gain valuable insights into complex psychosocial issues through the use of sophisticated interview techniques. Additionally, the program provides real-time feedback, allowing providers to continuously refine their skills. I’ve never encountered a company with such a refined ability to replicate the nuances of a clinical encounter, offering a truly remarkable training experience.”
SimCare AI’s technology offers a radical solution: proving clinical competency with just 20 patient encounters instead of 200. The system’s sophisticated AI maps decision trees for each patient interaction, creating dynamic, realistic conversations that align with accreditation standards.
This precision helps institutions track, assess, and verify student competencies according to regulatory requirements – allowing students and professionals to practice and be evaluated anytime, anywhere. This standardized approach not only reduces faculty burden and costs but also accelerates the pace at which new clinicians can enter the workforce.
Molly Bonakdarpour, Partner at Drive Capital, commented: “SimCare AI is addressing a clear need in healthcare training. In just four months, they’ve demonstrated strong early impact, delivering measurable ROI for customers. We’re impressed with their vision and execution and look forward to supporting their continued growth in AI-driven healthcare solutions.”
The platform’s impact extends across the healthcare education landscape. While medical schools use SimCare AI to teach patient interactions and clinical reasoning, therapy programs employ it for counselling practice, and telehealth companies leverage it for hiring and upskilling.
SimCare AI’s precision helps institutions track, assess, and verify student competencies according to regulatory requirements – a crucial feature for medical schools, nursing programs, and continuing medical education.
Vrishank Saini added: “Looking ahead, SimCare AI plans to integrate more detailed clinical data – from transcripts to diagnostic workups – into its evaluation system. The company’s goal is to standardize clinical training and evaluation across healthcare, enabling competency to be measured quickly and reliably. For risk-bearing organizations, this provides a clear, consistent method to train clinicians in the specific skills that drive quality metrics.”
