Startup Delivers On Future Tech’s Promise For the Disadvantaged

Veyo is an example of future’s tech exciting path toward inclusivity. The San Diego startup is using future-tech tools like big data and predictive software to deliver lower cost, higher performance non-emergency medical transportation for the economically disadvantaged.

The company is at the heart of future tech's mass-market economic potential for providing all Americans with goods and services that are cheaper, easier to use, safer and healthier.

Veyo uses future tech to better serve the disadvantaged

If you are trying to understand the political rhetoric around healthcare costs, look no further than Medicaid. Medicaid provides government-funded medical care for the economically disadvantage. One out of five Americans, 70 million people, rely on Medicaid for their medical care.

Veyo’s business plan is to reduce the $5 billion that Medicaid annually spends to provide 3.6 million transportation events for the economically disadvantaged. Veyo’s strategy is to use big data and predictive software to reduce costly inefficiencies while also making quantum leaps in patient service. After only one year of operations, covering just $120 million out of this $5 billion annual revenue market segment, Veyo has achieved:

• $7 million in cost savings


• A reduction in average wait times to 10 minutes from an industry standard of one hour


• A 99.5 percent on-time pickup rate compared to an industry standard 90 percent


• Cutting customer grievances to approximately a 10th of industry standards.

Veyo did not achieve these results by cherry-picking only the least costly, or easiest served, customers. Their contracts are for statewide service. They provide full curb-to-curb service or, based on customer needs, door-to-door.

How Veyo uses future tech to cut costs and improve service

Veyo uses future tech in a two-step, interactive process: capture massive amounts of data tied to the delivery of EMT services, and process this data in real time to identify immediate action items that improve performance.

GPS vehicle-tracking is core to the company's big data stream. And Veyo is the first in the EMT industry to track every vehicle using GPS.

Veyo uses predictive software to process their big data streams in dispatching vehicles. This is done in real time. For example, if an originally dispatched vehicle cannot achieve the targeted on-time pickup goal, Veyo’s smart system will identify and dispatch an alternative vehicle to achieve the targeted pickup time.

Veyo connects its real-time predictive software system to a multiple-channel customer-communications system. Patients can choose to receive pickup status information through a phone call from Veyo, by checking a Web portal or by receiving smart phone alerts. This same type of multiple-channel communications path is also used by customers for service reservations.

Veyo’s future tech job model

Veyo provides a glimpse into how future tech jobs will be designed around people and service. Their drivers are:

• Credentialed


• Instructed in CPR


• Qualified to serve customers across languages and cultures


• Trained on privacy laws


• Receive specialized training on how to serve customers with intellectual limitations


• Equipped with Veyo’s future tech tools and trained in their use.

Veyo’s future tech culture

CEO Josh Komenda invited me to Veyo to see for myself. Its offices are filled with millennial work associates. Komenda explained that many of his employees could make more money working for other future tech companies. But they stay at Veyo because their work makes a difference for those less advantaged, he explained.

This is a lesson for every business. The companies most successful at recruiting millennials have baked being "cool with a purpose” into every job versus having a corporate responsibility department that does cool and purposeful things.

You can watch my four-minute edited video interview with Komenda below, where he explains how Veyo is using future tech to lower costs, improve customer service and grow jobs.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/uPUw2YJ2H2A

Future tech’s economic promise for all Americans

Right now, future tech looks pretty scary to most of us. We fear our jobs will be replaced by a smart machine. We question whether future tech has any benefits for us. Right now future tech looks it just works for the rich, who can afford a $100,000 all electric smart car that can go from zero to 60 in less than three seconds, or for future tech workers living in a few cities like San Francisco.

San Diego-based Veyo, with locations in Colorado, Idaho, Texas and Michigan, provides tangible evidence that future tech can be inclusive to all Americans. And future tech companies like Veyo are emerging as America’s economic and jobs growth engines.

Veyo is also demonstrating that future tech will serve all Americans.

That is future tech's, and our, future. Explosive growth won from delivering inclusive solutions that cost less and mean more.

Image credit: Pixabay