MedHaul

Problem: It is incredibly inefficient for healthcare staff to find and book rides for highest need patients due to antiquated workflows.

Up to 51% of patients miss appointments due to transportation barriers, resulting in billions in lost revenue and poor patient outcomes.

In the clinical trials market, the #1 reason for declining study participation is the lack of transportation, and this exacerbates the lack of diversity in study participants.

Missed appointments and lack of clinical research participation means poor outcomes for patients and lost revenue for healthcare providers and clinical research organizations.

Transportation has long been a social determinant of health. About 5.8 million people in the United States (1.8%) delay medical care because they do not have transportation. Annually over 3 million people do not receive care at all due to lack of reliable transportation resources. Despite these staggering numbers, transportation barriers to healthcare are often not addressed seriously. There has been little effort to innovate this industry to meet the growing demand for NEMT. 

These transportation barriers can be more pronounced in locations where there are inadequate public transportation options.  For example, limited care access can also be seen in rural communities who typically have significantly less access to healthcare services than their urban counterparts. Approximately 20% of the American population resides in rural areas, yet less than 10% of US healthcare resources are located there. 

In Shelby County, Tennessee, where MedHaul is based, many households have few transportation solutions. 28.7% of Shelby County households have 1 or fewer vehicles. Low-income patients are also unlikely to be able to afford a taxi or ridesharing service to get to their appointments. 

To address these disparities, Our platform expands access to transportation, particularly for the following populations:

• Low-income

• Rural

• Elderly

• Those with unique transportation needs

  • Wheelchair bound

  • Stretcher bound

  • Traveling with children

  • Cognitive or physical impairments

Solution: MedHaul’s technology enables seamless transportation to medical appointments for vulnerable patients across all acuity levels (including door-through-door, wheelchair, and stretcher) and caters to additional needs such as car seats, and oxygen tanks.

How it works: Patients typically notify their healthcare providers that they will need transportation to get to their appointment. Nurses, administrators, or social workers put in detailed ride requests through the MedHaul platform. The MedHaul platform identifies the appropriate transportation providers and sends ride requests to the transportation company’s dashboard. Transportation companies accept the ride requests, which triggers notifications to the healthcare providers and riders. 

MedHaul emphasizes user experience by using AI & ML to allow patients and healthcare providers to track trips in real time, offering advanced insights and flexible booking options tailored to the use case and therapeutic area of focus. Our video demo shows how our users interact with our product.

MedHaul is utilizing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to develop a new tool, named Codi.

Through Codi, MedHaul aims to prioritize the rider and booking end user experience.

• Configurable Ride Algorithms: Codi generates adaptable ride algorithms that match NEMT companies with riders based on their compatibility and performance.
• Predictive Analytics: Codi utilizes predictive analytics to estimate the time required for various ride types. This ensures that riders are more likely to reach their appointments on time.
• Tailored for NEMT: Codi is a groundbreaking tool developed exclusively to cater to the unique needs of the NEMT community.

Following this development, we have exciting plans for Codi. We'll be leveraging Codi to explore how ensuring patients arrive at their appointments on time directly impacts their healthcare outcomes. From tracking cancer progression to monitoring A1c reductions, we're committed to demonstrating the substantial impact that timely transportation can have on healthcare results

For riders, MedHaul expands access to care by providing complex ride solutions that are typically overlooked. For riders with mobility issues, MedHaul provides wheelchair, stretcher, bariatric, and ambulatory assistance rides. Without these services, riders would face significant difficulties in accessing care. 

1 in 5 Americans over the age of 65 no longer drive. MedHaul provides skilled transportation providers who can help these populations get from their homes to the vehicles safely. 

Many low-income Americans lack access to cars and public transportation options. 

Rural and semi-rural populations may have to travel long distances in order to access healthcare. The MedHaul transportation network is constructed to connect rural populations to healthcare facilities.

The MedHaul team has over 60 years of combined experience in digital health, software engineering, and logistics. We’ve successfully led over $700M worth of complex projects for world-renowned healthcare institutions and Fortune 500 companies and built tech products from the ground up for successful startups. 

Our CEO, Erica Plybeah, founded MedHaul in 2017. After a decade of building software solutions for healthcare organizations and working for healthcare technology entities including Epic and Flatiron Health, Erica was inspired to start MedHaul after witnessing first-hand how transportation impacts access to care.  Her grandmother was a Type 2 Diabetic and double leg amputee. Her grandmother's primary transporter was her mother who worked full-time as a teacher, and was constantly figuring out how to juggle her work schedule with her grandmother's doctors' appointments, without lifting her in and out of the family car, which was not wheelchair accessible.

MedHaul was founded because everyone deserves safe, reliable, and efficient transportation to care, regardless of special, or unique, need.

MedHaul was founded in Memphis to better understand how our product works in proximity to the communities we serve. Shelby County has a mix of urban, suburban, and rural populations. Shelby County also has limited public transportation solutions and a significant low-income population. Memphis has been an important proving ground to allow MedHaul to better understand and improve our product.

Traditional non-emergency medical transportation has not been focused on innovation to improve patient outcomes. Most recent innovations in this space have been focused on helping transportation companies better manage their driver schedules. While this is important, these advances are incomplete. 

MedHaul is innovating by using AI/ML to improve patient outcomes. Our solution is focused on finding the best transportation solutions for each ride. Our solution considers both transportation provider capabilities along with transportation past performance and customer satisfaction. This solution will ensure that some of the most vulnerable populations MedHaul works with experience the best service to ensure they can make it to their appointments on time and safely. 

Our solution aims to catalyze an increased emphasis for healthcare organizations and transportation provider on patient experience. MedHaul plans to demonstrate the values of improved patient experience using survey data and improved attendance to appointments.  

To promote healthy living at all ages, MedHaul has focused on expanding access to care to many who lack consistent access to healthcare. 

As noted earlier in the appliaction, 1 in 5 Americans over the age of 65 no longer drive. On average, senior citizens go to 4 appointments per year. Expanding access to care to aging populations helps catch and address health concerns. 

For people with chronic diseases such as cancer or kidney disease, may need to attend appointments multiple times a week at specialized facilities that may be far from home. The MedHaul transportation network is designed to provide a wide range of capabilities and geographic footprint to support riders.  

MedHaul will accelerate our efforts to incorporate machine learning and artificial intelligence into a new tool, named Cody. Using Cody, MedHaul will work to ensure that user experience is paramount. 

• Cody creates configurable ride algorithms, pairing NEMT companies with riders based on best fit and performance

• Use predictive analytics to estimate how long ride types may take, improving the likelihood that riders make appointments on time

• Cody is a tool that has not been developed to serve the NEMT community

These upgrades include AI-based ride matching that utilizes on-time metrics to incentivize and reward the best-performing transportation companies. By incorporating feedback-based ride matching and leveraging metrics, these enhancements provide a performance-based approach that enhances the overall rider experience. Additionally, these upgrades offer incentives to transportation companies, promoting scalability and encouraging their continued growth with MedHaul. 

Prioritized Feature Additions

• The system incorporates ride performance ratios, such as on-time performance and user feedback scores, as well as top-tier performance levels for transportation companies. 

• Improved Rider experience focused on aspects such as promptness, assistance, and overall customer satisfaction. 

To ensure ethical and responsible use of AI in healthcare, there are several key steps and strategies that can be employed. These measures can help mitigate potential risks and ensure that AI technologies are used in a manner that aligns with ethical and responsible principles:

Data Privacy and Security:

Prioritize the security and privacy of patient and healthcare data. Ensure compliance with regulations such as HIPAA (in the United States) or GDPR (in the European Union).

Implement strong encryption, access controls, and secure data storage practices to protect sensitive information.

Transparency and Explainability:

Make AI algorithms and decision-making processes transparent and understandable to users and stakeholders.

Ensure that AI systems provide explanations for their recommendations, especially in critical healthcare decisions.

Fairness and Bias Mitigation:

Regularly audit AI models for bias and take steps to mitigate any biases that may arise in the data or algorithms.

Use diverse and representative datasets to reduce potential bias in AI predictions.

Continuous Monitoring and Evaluation:

Continuously monitor AI systems to ensure they perform as expected and identify any deviations or errors.

Regularly evaluate the impact of AI on patient outcomes and make improvements as needed.

Professional Oversight:

Stay current with healthcare and AI-related regulations and guidelines in the regions where MedHaul operates.

Engage in ongoing compliance assessments and make necessary adjustments.

Ethical Framework:

Develop and adhere to a clear ethical framework that outlines the principles guiding the use of AI in healthcare and logistics.

Engage with stakeholders, including medical professionals and patients, to shape this framework.

Conduct risk assessments to identify potential issues and vulnerabilities in AI systems.

Develop and implement risk mitigation plans to address these issues proactively.

Ethical AI Training:

Invest in the training of employees, especially data scientists and AI developers, to understand the ethical implications of AI in healthcare and logistics.

Eight (8) members work on our solution team. This includes members in the Engineering Team, one Product Lead, one Operations Manager, the COO and CEO. 

MedHaul has four (4) additional contract staff members for Customer Support and a Director of Business Development. 

Though MedHaul’s MVP went live in 2019, the current version of the MedHaul platform launched in August of 2021. Since then, our team has been working towards improvements towards our platform. MedHaul has been putting in place the necessary infrastructure to launch our Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning solutions.

MedHaul has undergone the rigorous B Lab certification process to publicly display our commitment to people, planet, and purpose. As for Diversity, Equity and and Inclusion efforts, we enforced following policies: 

NO DISCRIMINATION EVER: MedHaul will always actively enforce a policy of 100% zero tolerance for bullying and/or discrimination against race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, gender, age, parental status, physical appearance/body size, marital status, accent, education, and many others. 

INCLUSION: Employing those that are either familiar with the complexities of many impoverished communities or are willing to learn. MedHaul has a major focus on closing health literacy gaps, but also socioeconomic literacy gaps

Additionally, MedHaul is committed to targeting communities and demographics that are often overlooked which include: low-income, elderly, chronically ill, and those with physical, intellectual, and developmental disabilities. We are also committed to hiring from these same communities, so that our team reflects and has similar shared experiences as the communities we serve. 

Diversity is also included in the MedHaul leadership team. Our CEO and COO are both women of color. Other key positions, including our Director of Business Development and Head of the Customer Support team are women.

MedHaul also has maternity and paternity leave, a remote workforce, and flexible schedules to allow an accessible work environment. 

MedHaul has been focused on providing excellent non-emergency medical transportation solutions to some of the most vulnerable communities. The NEMT industry has traditionally not been focused on innovation or focused on high-quality. Our solution intends to use AI and ML to measure transportation provider performance, rider needs, and geographic considerations to find the most appropriate, high-quality transportation solution. Finding the best solution for riders will increase the likelihood that riders make it to appointments on time, decrease missed appointments, and improve rider experience. 

Our Team is generally organized into four key areas:

• Customer Support: Our Customer Support team interfaces with our healthcare clients, riders, and transportation providers. 

• Business Development: Led by our Director of Business Development, MedHaul engages with potential customers, pursues partnership agreements, and applies for grants.

• Operations: Our Operations Team, handles customer and vendor invoicing, transportation recruitment, and strategic conversations. 

• Tech: Our tech team builds out new functionality, security improvement, and outlines our AI/ML learning. 

To engage key stakeholders, MedHaul has had regular, on-going conversations with our Healthcare organizations, riders, and transportation providers to better understand how our solution can serve them. The MedHaul Customer Support team surveys our riders to better understand their experience. MedHaul holds 30, 60, and 90 day check-ins with healthcare customers to see what improvements can be made. The MedHaul Operations team learns from the transportation providers about how to improve their operations and interface with our platform. 

To successfully build and implement our solution, MedHaul will need to expand our engineering team. This will allow MedHaul to dedicate more man-hours to the development of the AI/ML initiatives while also building out other components of the MedHaul platform. 

MedHaul works on a Market Lineage system. Healthcare organizations pay MedHaul to find appropriate transportation services for their patients. The point of our solution is to better identify only the highest-quality providers. Typically, healthcare organizations sign multi-year contracts with MedHaul to access our marketplace of transportation companies. 

As MedHaul is a start-up, MedHaul is raising investment capital and pursuing grants to support MedHaul’s operations while MedHaul continues to grow. Based on projections, MedHaul is looking to have revenues cover expenses sometime in 2025 or 2026. 

Our operating costs in 2023 are approximately $85,000 a month. MedHaul anticipates our operating costs increasing to $140,000 a month in 2024 as ride volumes continue to increase.

• MedHaul is looking for funding in the $75K-$90K range. This amount would allow MedHaul to bring on additional engineering support to focus on AI/ML initiatives. This funding would be used on salaries for additional engineering support 

Being granted the CureX residency would help our organization in a number of ways. The three biggest ways would be:

1. Funding - the funding will allow MedHaul to grow our engineering capacity.

2. Mentorship - the MIT Solve network has extensive knowledge and experience in Artificial Intelligence. Having access to subject matter experts that can guide our development will be invaluable.

3. Networking Opportunities - MedHaul is always open to getting introductions to healthcare professionals, working groups, and thought leaders that can influence the way MedHaul thinks and operates.