Child Health Imprints (CHIL) raises $2.3 million in pre-series A funding

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Child Health Imprints (CHIL) has announced that it has raised $2.4 million in pre-series A funding. The round was led by HealthXCapital, with participation from Enterprise SG and other HNIs. According to the 2018 World Health Organisation’s report, nearly 15 million infants are born preterm annually, of which close to one million die due to pre-term birth-related complications. More than 60 per cent of pre-term births take place in Asia and Africa. Prematurity, infections, delay in treatment, skilled manpower shortage and human-based errors are the major causes of neonatal deaths. Better data integration amongst multiple devices (patient monitor, ventilator, blood gas machines, infusion pumps) and ElectroMagnetic Resonance adoption in NICU, along with unified neonatal workflow practices need to be urgently adopted to tackle the rising neonatal births across the world.

CHIL is one of the rare technology companies which is committed to improving clinical outcomes in Neonatal ICUs using IoT and digitisation. It also has significant potential to enable remote real-time management of NICUs located far out especially in emerging Asia, which are facing specialised skill shortages. CHIL develops and applies informational and computational technologies including IoT, AI, and predictive analysis; to improve early diagnosis of critical diseases, and overall quality of neonatal intensive care units across the world. The solution aggregates and integrates neonate’s vital data, bedside clinical observations and laboratory results, leverages deep learning methodologies to analyse the data in medically comprehensive formats and is available to clinicians for improvised decision making.

“Our aim is to improve neonatal safety across countries with high neonatal mortality rate. The company will also develop inroads into more advanced neonatal ecosystems to bring their best clinical practices to other markets across the world,” said Harpreet Singh, CEO, CHIL.

The startup is set for further expansion in India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Gulf Cooperation Council and the ASEAN region shortly. CHIL enables command center console to manage satellite NICU in hub and spoke models enabling specialised neonatal care to reach the remotest parts of these countries. It focuses on the improvement of quality indicators i.e. antibiotic usage in NICU, average length of stay, ventilator usage to improvise the clinical care practices across NICU. It further facilitates data collaboration across NICU through standardised data dictionary and adherence to clinical guidelines i.e. ESPGHAN, LEXICOMP and Neofax.

Seemant Jauhari, Managing Partner of HealthXCapital, said, “HealthXCapital is proud to be a part of an exciting journey which shall enable a new model for neonatal care to be offered remotely by the best available neonatologists present in cities to multiple paediatric clinics located in distant areas. The clinical decision support and predictive analytics based on real-time data showcases the power of digital health disrupting traditional models of care delivery,” and Ted Tan, Deputy CEO, Enterprise Singapore, praised Child Health Imprint’s progress to date, saying, “CHIL is rapidly becoming one of the most crucial and significant technology platforms in Asia.” On its journey to evolve NICUs in Asia, CHIL has gathered several accolades. CHIL’s iNICU platform was amongst the top five finalists in K-Startup Grand Challenge in 2017 from top 50 innovations selected by the South Korean Government. They also showcased at the India-Singapore Enterprise and Innovation conference in the presence of the Prime Ministers of India and Singapore.