POTLUCK - People-Oriented Transportation Linkages for Underserved Communities
Age Friendly Arizona and Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) has partnered with the Arizona State University Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) to help improve transportation services for older adults. The Working Backwards Workshop, led by the CIC, explored potential pathways to broaden access of non-emergency medical rides for older adults especially in rural regions. POTLUCK, People-Oriented Transportation Linkages for Underserved Communities, is envisioned as a comprehensive suite of programs and services designed to improve the access and quality of healthcare for rural Arizonans.
Problem
Older adults in rural communities overcome long distances, limited infrastructure and strained resources to access healthcare. One way non-emergency medical transportation providers support these communities is by facilitating transportation to Healthcare Providers. Transportation Agency resources get strained when they are not notified immediately about rescheduled appointments. Currently, 17% of Transportation Agency rides are canceled on arrival to Healthcare Providers. This allows unnecessary trips to be taken and time and resources to be wasted, both on the side of the patient and the transportation provider.
Approach
The POTLUCK program will help facilitate communication among doctor’s offices, transportation providers, and patients to ensure that if an appointment is canceled, both the transportation provider and patient know so that no erroneous trips are made. Additionally, each of the three parties will know about the rescheduling of an appointment, so that there is less confusion regarding when someone’s appointment is. The POTLUCK system allows doctor’s offices and transportation providers to work together under the goal of ensuring patients arrive at scheduled appointments, and do not arrive at appointments that have been canceled, for whatever reason. The solution provides a clean, easy to use interface for both doctor’s offices and transportation providers to enter such information.
Next Steps
The ASU CIC is currently working with Age Friendly Arizona and Maricopa Association of Governments to build the POTLUCK prototype.
About the ASU CIC
The ASU Smart Cities Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) is a strategic relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is supported by AWS on ASU’s Innovation campus - SkySong. The mission of the CIC is to drive Innovation Challenges that materially benefit the greater Phoenix metro area and beyond. The CIC will do this by solving pressing community and regional challenges, using shareable and repeatable technology solutions from ideation through prototype, as a service for the greater human good.
The CIC also provides real-world problem-solving experiences to students by immersing them in the application of proven innovation methods in combination with the latest technologies to solve important challenges in the public sector.
The challenges being addressed cover a wide variety of topics including homelessness, water conservation, vandalism, pedestrian safety, digital service delivery and many others. The CIC leverages the deep subject matter expertise of government, education and non-profit organizations to clearly understand the customers affected by public sector challenges and develops solutions that meet the customer needs.
For more information on the ASU CIC, to read about projects or to submit a challenge, please visit https://smartchallenges.asu.edu.