Prana: The AI Doctor That Never Sleeps

In an era where smartphones manage everything from banking to transportation, healthcare has remained stubbornly tied to scheduled appointments and waiting rooms. Prana, a San Francisco–based startup founded in 2025, is attempting to change that paradigm with an ambitious promise: an AI primary care doctor that lives in your pocket and monitors your health around the clock. Rather than replacing physicians, Prana positions itself as a continuous care layer—one that observes, analyzes, and intervenes long before symptoms escalate into emergencies.

The company emerged from a simple but powerful insight: most serious health problems do not appear suddenly. They develop gradually in the quiet intervals between doctor visits. Traditional primary care, structured around annual physicals and reactive consultations, often misses these subtle warning signs. Prana’s founders believe artificial intelligence, combined with real-time health data, can transform medicine from episodic treatment into proactive prevention.

As part of the Winter 2026 startup cohort, Prana is currently active and operating in beta with early users. Its small team of four blends engineering rigor with clinical training, reflecting the startup’s mission to merge software scalability with medical responsibility. By automating routine tasks and continuously analyzing patient data, the company aims to deliver 24/7 physician-level oversight at a fraction of traditional healthcare costs.

Why Is Traditional Primary Care Failing to Catch Problems Early?

Primary care systems worldwide share a common structural flaw: they are reactive. Patients typically seek medical attention only when symptoms become noticeable or disruptive. Annual checkups, while valuable, provide only snapshots of health rather than a continuous narrative. This episodic model leaves long stretches during which subtle physiological changes can go unnoticed.

Chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, and metabolic disorders often develop gradually. Blood pressure may rise incrementally over months; glucose levels may drift upward before crossing diagnostic thresholds. These trends—what Prana calls “clinical drift”—frequently escape detection until they reach dangerous levels. Meanwhile, health data remains fragmented across multiple platforms. Wearable devices track sleep, heart rate, and activity, but their insights rarely integrate seamlessly with electronic health records maintained by hospitals and clinics.

The consequences of this fragmentation are significant. Physicians lack a holistic view of their patients’ daily lives, and patients themselves may not recognize patterns hidden within their own data. By the time warning signs become visible, opportunities for early intervention may already be lost. Prana’s founders argue that healthcare needs a monitoring system rather than a visit-based model—one that treats health as a continuous signal rather than a series of isolated events.

How Does Prana Turn Health Data into Continuous Care?

Prana’s core innovation lies in its ability to unify disparate health information streams into a single clinical timeline. The platform connects to electronic health records, laboratory results, prescription histories, and wearable devices, aggregating them into a comprehensive profile. Instead of requiring users to manually interpret charts or metrics, the system analyzes patterns in the background, searching for anomalies and long-term trends.

The AI functions as an always-on physician assistant, constantly evaluating incoming data. If the system detects changes—such as gradually increasing resting heart rate, declining sleep quality, or abnormal lab results—it flags potential risks before they become symptomatic. Users receive explanations in plain language, helping them understand not only what is happening but why it matters.

Unlike many health apps that operate as conversational chatbots, Prana presents itself as a full-stack medical provider. Its AI does more than answer questions; it interprets laboratory reports, manages prescriptions, coordinates logistics, and triages concerns. By automating the administrative and analytical workload that consumes much of a physician’s time, the platform allows human doctors to focus on high-impact clinical decisions.

What Does “Always-On” Medicine Actually Look Like?

The concept of an always-on doctor may sound futuristic, but Prana frames it as an evolution of existing telemedicine practices. Instead of scheduling virtual visits, patients maintain a persistent connection to a monitoring system that watches over their health continuously. This shift transforms healthcare from a service accessed intermittently into an infrastructure operating quietly in the background.

When the AI identifies a concerning pattern, it escalates the case to a network of human physicians. This “doctor-in-the-loop” approach ensures that critical decisions remain under professional oversight. Rather than replacing clinicians, Prana reallocates their attention to moments when their expertise is most needed. Routine tasks—history taking, scheduling, follow-ups—are handled automatically.

For patients, the experience resembles having a medical guardian that never clocks out. Questions about lab results can be answered immediately. Prescription adjustments can be managed without waiting weeks for an appointment. Early warnings about potential issues encourage preventive action, potentially reducing hospitalizations and long-term complications.

Can Artificial Intelligence Deliver Care at Scale Without Sacrificing Safety?

Healthcare innovation often faces a tension between scalability and safety. Prana’s strategy is to automate the predictable, low-risk aspects of care while preserving human oversight for complex judgments. By handling up to 90 percent of routine administrative work, the platform frees physicians to concentrate on diagnosis, treatment planning, and patient communication.

Safety mechanisms are embedded throughout the system. Data anomalies trigger escalation protocols rather than automated prescriptions. Clinical guidelines inform decision-making processes, and the involvement of licensed doctors ensures accountability. The company’s leadership emphasizes that AI should augment medical practice, not replace it.

Cost reduction is another consequence of automation. Traditional healthcare systems devote substantial resources to paperwork, scheduling, and logistical coordination. By streamlining these processes, Prana aims to provide round-the-clock access to physicians at a price point that could make continuous care widely accessible.

Who Are the Minds Behind Prana’s Vision?

Prana’s founding team combines expertise from biomedical engineering, quantitative finance, and clinical medicine—a multidisciplinary approach that reflects the complexity of modern healthcare technology.

Chief Executive Officer Meer Patel studied biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University and made the unusual decision to defer medical school in order to build the company. His belief that software can scale more effectively than appointments shaped the startup’s core philosophy. Patel’s previous work included developing AI solutions for large enterprises and contributing to medical diagnostic technologies.

Chief Technology Officer Vishvam Rawal brings experience from quantitative research and algorithmic trading, fields known for handling massive volumes of real-time data. He now applies those high-frequency data engineering techniques to health signals, constructing infrastructure capable of processing continuous streams of biometric information.

Chief Health Officer Sanjit Menon, a graduating medical doctor, provides clinical oversight and ensures that the platform aligns with established medical standards. His background includes founding an AI medical education platform and publishing research in peer-reviewed journals, giving the team both academic credibility and practical experience.

Together, the founders embody the convergence of engineering discipline and medical insight required to build a trustworthy AI healthcare provider.

What Challenges Must an AI Doctor Overcome to Gain Trust?

Despite its promise, the concept of an AI primary care doctor raises important questions. Trust, privacy, and regulatory compliance are paramount in healthcare. Patients must feel confident that their sensitive medical data is secure and that automated recommendations are reliable. Regulatory frameworks designed for traditional providers may struggle to accommodate hybrid AI-human models.

Adoption also depends on behavioral change. Patients accustomed to reactive care must embrace proactive monitoring, while physicians must adapt to collaborating with algorithmic systems. Prana’s beta phase provides an opportunity to test not only technological performance but also user acceptance.

The company’s success will likely hinge on demonstrating measurable improvements in outcomes—earlier detection of disease, reduced hospital visits, and enhanced patient satisfaction. If these benefits materialize, continuous care could become a new standard rather than an experimental concept.

Could Continuous Monitoring Redefine the Future of Healthcare?

Prana’s vision extends beyond individual convenience. If continuous monitoring proves effective, it could reshape the economics of healthcare by shifting resources from treatment to prevention. Chronic diseases account for a significant portion of healthcare spending worldwide; detecting them earlier could reduce long-term costs and improve quality of life.

The startup’s approach also aligns with broader trends toward personalized medicine. By analyzing each patient’s unique data stream, the system can tailor recommendations to individual physiology rather than relying solely on population averages. Over time, such platforms could integrate genetic information, environmental factors, and lifestyle data, creating highly customized care pathways.

While still in its early stages, Prana represents a glimpse of a healthcare model in which the boundary between daily life and medical oversight dissolves. Instead of episodic encounters, health management becomes a continuous partnership between humans and intelligent systems.

Is the Era of the Pocket Doctor Finally Arriving?

The idea of carrying a doctor in one’s pocket has long been a metaphor for accessible healthcare. With advances in artificial intelligence, wearable technology, and data integration, that metaphor is edging closer to reality. Prana’s experiment suggests that the future of medicine may be less about visiting clinics and more about embedding care into everyday life.

Whether the startup ultimately succeeds will depend on its ability to balance innovation with responsibility. Yet its underlying premise—that health should be monitored continuously rather than episodically—addresses a fundamental weakness in modern healthcare systems. If Prana and similar ventures achieve their goals, the annual physical may one day seem as outdated as paper medical charts.

For now, the company continues to refine its platform with early users, guided by the belief that proactive care can save not only time and money but lives. In doing so, Prana is attempting to transform the physician’s role from a responder to illness into a guardian of ongoing wellness—an evolution that could redefine what it means to receive medical care in the digital age.