Chicago, February 27, 2025 – SimCare AI, a company leveraging artificial intelligence to revolutionize clinical training, today announced that it has secured $2 million in seed funding.
The healthcare sector faces a critical shortage of clinicians, a challenge exacerbated by the limitations of traditional training methods. These methods often require extensive hands-on practice and struggle to adequately prepare professionals for the complexities of modern healthcare, particularly in managing chronic diseases. SimCare AI aims to address these issues by rethinking clinical training from the ground up, utilizing AI patients to bypass regulatory constraints and certify clinical skills more efficiently.
The funding round was led by Y Combinator and Drive Capital, with additional contributions from Harper Court Ventures Fund, Singularity Capital, Triple S Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Asymmetry Ventures, Sand Hill North, and Transpose Platform. The company was founded by Vrishank Saini and Tigran Bdoyan.
The genesis of SimCare AI stems from a personal challenge. When Vrishank Saini failed a critical clinical communications exam and couldn’t afford the expensive tutoring fees, he and Tigran Bdoyan collaborated to develop an AI-driven solution. The resulting tool proved highly effective, attracting 2,500 users and generating $5,000 in monthly recurring revenue within just three weeks.
Undeterred by an initial rejection from Y Combinator, Saini and Bdoyan took a bold step. They dropped out of college without funding, relocated to San Francisco, and, despite being told they couldn’t reapply to that same cohort, they created new email accounts and reapplied. Y Combinator, impressed by their determination, ultimately provided them with $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 is designed to be adaptable for different specialties. It offers a range of applications, from preparing residents for complex patient scenarios to enabling social work programs to practice family interventions. Telehealth companies, for instance, can leverage the platform to assess job applicants, streamlining the hiring process while reducing costs. It also supports onboarding, training, upskilling, and remediation, eliminating the prolonged timelines and high expenses associated with traditional training programs.
For healthcare organizations, the ability to benchmark and predict the performance of their workforce offers a significant advantage. SimCare AI has already initiated 30 pilot programs with institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania.
This innovation comes at a critical juncture. As experienced physicians retire and are replaced by less experienced clinicians, the gap in clinical experience is widening. Traditional training methods – such as role-playing, in-person evaluations, and one-on-one interviews – are costly but often fail 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 provides a novel solution by demonstrating clinical competency with only 20 patient encounters, compared to the 200 traditionally required. The system uses sophisticated AI to map decision trees for each patient interaction, generating realistic conversations that adhere to accreditation standards. This precision assists institutions in tracking, assessing, and verifying student competencies consistent with regulatory requirements, allowing for practice and evaluation anytime, anywhere. This approach reduces the burden and costs for faculty while accelerating the pace clinicians enter the workforce. This standardized approach not only reduces the time to train but also reduces faculty burden.
Molly Bonakdarpour, Partner at Drive Capital, said, “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 is poised to have a substantial impact on healthcare education. While medical schools use SimCare AI to enhance patient interaction and clinical reasoning skills, therapy programs are using them for counseling practice and telehealth companies for hiring and upskilling. SimCare AI’s precision enables institutions to track, evaluate, and verify student competencies following regulatory criteria, a critical aspect for medical and nursing schools, as well as for continuing medical education programs.
Vrishank Saini noted, “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.”
About SimCare AI
SimCare AI (YC S24) creates simulated conversations with AI patients to scale healthcare training. Healthcare organizations use clinical simulations for more efficient recruitment, reduced training time and costs, and enhanced patient outcomes. Governments are pushing to expand the healthcare workforce by increasing training output; however, it is illegal to train without direct clinical supervision, limiting scale in training. These restrictions don’t apply to AI patients, providing a scalable solution that helps organizations train more people, meet accreditation standards, and grow faster. For more information please visit: http://simcare.ai/
About Drive Capital
Drive Capital is a venture capital firm in Columbus that invests in world-class founders building the next generation of market-defining companies.
