Lead Presenter:  Raymond Chan | PhD, Associate - Manager | Arcadis​​​​​​​

Presentation Description
This presentation will provide a high-level overview of the challenges and successes of developing agency-owned integrations between internal booking and dispatching software, external medical transportation coordinators, and healthcare facilities.

While technology has allowed for more streamlined and customer-focused transportation for both demand responsive systems and medical transportation, many times transit agencies struggle to connect with local medical coordination agencies and healthcare facilities. As part of a grant, Arcadis was able to develop custom technology for a client in rural Iowa that allows the agency to link its demand responsive and dispatch management software to a local provider's Medicaid transportation coordination system. In addition, with patient consent, a separate system allows for transportation availability to be matched with patient appointments to ensure that all patients can access transportation.

The use of these technologies reduces the amount of coordination between various transportation coordinators, healthcare professionals, and transit agencies. This helps improve burnout amongst critical staff at multiple organizations and improves overall efficiency by using machine-to-machine communication to automate many tasks. However, there are challenges that need to be understood and overcome to improve success rates. Data privacy issues, lack of a common nomenclature when coordinating trips, interpretation of data between technology systems, and access to data were key issues identified during this project. In addition, a strong system design facilitates long term maintenance, which is important for ensuring that agencies can maintain these gains over the long run.

  Co-presenter(s): 

Kenzie Maidl
Associate - Manager

Phil White
Transit Data Specialist

Nisa Hafeez
Transit Data Analyst

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