If you’re a doctor or a clinic looking at CrelioHealth and wondering whether it fixes your paperwork, here’s the short answer: probably not, because it isn’t built for that. CrelioHealth is a LIMS, a lab engine for diagnostic centres, priced per centre from about ₹8,000/mo plus GST. If the thing eating your evenings is notes, not lab samples, a documentation-first tool fits better. Patient Square’s Practice Copilot starts at ₹1,599/mo per doctor, and the AI Copilot EHR bundles in at the Copilot tier for ₹2,399/mo (ex-GST, add 18%). You can book a demo and watch a finished SOAP note land in about two minutes.
This isn’t a knock on CrelioHealth. It’s a category question. Below: what CrelioHealth is genuinely good at, what it costs, where a clinic’s real cost actually sits, and the honest case for staying with Crelio.
Bottom line
- CrelioHealth is lab software (LIMS), priced per centre from ~₹8,000/mo + GST, with onboarding fees from ₹10,000.
- Patient Square is documentation software, priced per doctor from ₹1,599/mo + GST, EHR bundled at ₹2,399/mo.
- Different jobs. A lab buys Crelio. A clinic drowning in notes buys a scribe plus EHR.
- We don’t do LIMS. If lab operations are your core, Crelio wins, full stop.
CrelioHealth vs Patient Square at a glance
Here’s the split, so you can decide in thirty seconds whether to keep reading.
| CrelioHealth | Patient Square (Practice Copilot) | |
|---|---|---|
| Core job | Lab / diagnostics management (LIMS) | Clinical documentation + records |
| Built for | Pathology labs, diagnostic centres | Solo doctors, OPD clinics, practices |
| Pricing basis | Per centre | Per doctor |
| India entry price | ~₹8,000/mo + GST (Standard) | ₹1,599/mo + GST (Assist) |
| Bundled EHR price | n/a (it’s a lab system) | ₹2,399/mo + GST (Copilot tier) |
| Onboarding fee | ₹10,000 to ₹50,000 | None |
| AI ambient scribe | No | Yes, English + Hindi + 20+ languages |
| ICD-10 suggestions | No | Yes (suggestions, not a coding engine) |
| Prescription draft | No | Yes (draft to review, not e-prescribing) |
If your row-by-row read says “I need a lab system,” stop here and go with Crelio. If it says “I need my notes done,” keep going.
What CrelioHealth is actually good at
Give it its due. CrelioHealth is a mature LIMS with real depth for diagnostic labs. It handles the full lab workflow: patient registration, sample tracking, report generation, and dispatch. It monitors multiple centres from one dashboard in real time. It automates insurance billing with revenue-cycle integration, and it hosts data on cloud infrastructure inside India. Its own pricing pitches the Standard plan at new and small labs and physician-office labs running up to about 75 tests a day.
That’s a lab product doing lab things well. A pathologist or a diagnostic-chain owner should have Crelio on the list. None of what follows says otherwise.
The question is whether that describes you. A lot of doctors land on Crelio because it shows up in “healthcare software India” searches, then realise the sample-accession and referral-lab machinery isn’t the problem they have. If your problem is a 40-patient OPD and a stack of half-written notes, you can see the alternative in a demo before committing to a lab platform you’ll half-use.
What does CrelioHealth cost in India?
Credit to Crelio here, they publish it. The India LIMS pricing page lists per-centre monthly plans: Standard at about ₹8,000/mo, Advanced at ₹15,000/mo, Premium at ₹25,000/mo, each plus 18% GST, with Enterprise custom-quoted. On top of the subscription sit one-time onboarding fees, from ₹10,000 for Standard up to ₹50,000 for Premium. Billing is annual-contract based.
Read the unit carefully: that’s per centre. A lab pays it because one centre serves many doctors and thousands of tests. For a single-doctor clinic, ₹8,000/mo plus a ₹10,000 setup fee to run software that doesn’t write your notes is a hard sell.
Patient Square prices the other way, per doctor, for the documentation job. Assist is ₹1,599/mo annual, Copilot ₹2,399/mo (adds the bundled AI Copilot EHR and WhatsApp messaging), Autopilot ₹3,999/mo. All ex-GST; add 18%, so Copilot lands near ₹2,831/mo all-in. No onboarding fee, unlimited visits and notes. The full ladder sits on the pricing page.
Where a clinic’s real recurring cost hides
Lab software solves lab economics. It does nothing for the cost most clinics actually carry, which is time on documentation. In a 67-country study published in BMJ Open, Indian consultations averaged about two minutes, among the shortest anywhere. Two minutes with the patient, and the record is what gets shortchanged.
That thin record is expensive in a way that doesn’t show on an invoice. Roughly 65,000 medical-negligence matters reach Indian courts and consumer forums each year, and the defence that holds up is a complete contemporaneous record. NMC conduct rules expect outpatient records kept for three years and produced within days on request. A LIMS won’t help you there. A scribe that finishes a defensible note during the visit will.
That’s the wedge. Here’s the canonical version of what Patient Square does: Practice Copilot brings the whole practice under one AI copilot, an ambient AI Medical Scribe that hands back a structured SOAP note, ICD-10 suggestions, and a prescription draft minutes after the visit, plus a bundled AI EHR, scheduling, and messaging as you move up the plan. Hospitals get Hospital Copilot. If that’s the problem on your desk, book a demo and test it on a real OPD day.
What you give up by choosing documentation-first
Be honest about the trade. If you pick Patient Square over Crelio, you don’t get a LIMS. No sample accession, no referral-lab workflows, no lab-grade RCM, no per-test turnaround tracking. If those are core to your business, that’s a real loss and Crelio is the right call.
There’s also the compliance framing to keep straight. Patient Square handles data to DPDP Act 2023 standards, consent-first and purpose-limited, with a SOC 2 Type II audit in progress (not certified) and ABDM integration on the roadmap, not live today. We keep records born digital so you’re ready for the ABHA-linked era on your timeline, but we don’t claim ABDM integration you can switch on this week. If a vendor tells you their ABDM is live and certified, ask to see the NHA certificate.
What you keep is the part a busy clinic uses every hour: capture in the patient’s language, a clean English note the moment they leave, ICD-10 suggestions, and a prescription draft you review and sign. Notes belong to your clinic; export or delete any visit anytime.
When CrelioHealth is the better choice
Stay with Crelio, or choose it, if diagnostics is your business. If you run a pathology lab, a radiology centre, or a diagnostic chain, and your daily fight is sample leakage, turnaround time, referral-lab reconciliation, and lab billing, CrelioHealth is purpose-built for that and priced for a centre that runs volume. A per-doctor scribe isn’t competing with it; it’s the wrong category. Buying a documentation tool to run a lab would leave you missing the exact machinery Crelio exists to provide.
Choose documentation-first if you’re a doctor or a clinic whose evenings disappear into charting, who wants a note done during the visit, transparent per-doctor pricing, and a bundled EHR without an implementation project. That’s most clinics reading this. A few clinics with an in-house lab genuinely run both, a LIMS for the lab and a scribe for the consults, and that’s a fine answer too.
How to decide this week
Skip the feature-sheet staring contest and run the test:
- Track where your time actually goes for three days. If it’s samples and lab reports, you want a LIMS. If it’s notes and records, you want a scribe.
- If it’s documentation, shortlist per-doctor tools with published pricing and no setup fee.
- Match the clinical output: a structured note, ICD-10 suggestions, and a checked prescription draft, so you compare like for like.
- Run it on real OPD visits in your own languages, not a scripted demo. Capture in Hindi or Marathi; check the English note.
- Settle the data question with any vendor: where it’s hosted, who owns it, and the real ABDM status.
The receipts, encryption, access, audit status, sit on our security page, and the per-doctor ladder with no asterisks is on the pricing page. Book a short demo if you want the note quality checked against your own visit type. If you run a lab, Crelio is your tool. If you’re a clinic buried in notes, you’re in the right place.