Akido Labs, a provider and maker of a clinical automation platform, is launching an AI-powered street medicine program in the Bay Area.
Akido’s AI-driven platform, ScopeAI, will bolster the capacity of street medicine teams with the goal of keeping unhoused patients healthy and out of hospitals.
With ScopeAI and its own EHR, Akido teams can synthesize fragmented medical records, social needs data and real-time patient data in the field. Several community partners are supporting the program: Future Communities Institute (FCI), Five Keys and Reimagine Freedom. FCI is convening the group.
“In the face of unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, it is imperative that we rethink care models and forge new partnerships that will allow us to ensure that our most vulnerable communities continue to receive vital, lifesaving services,” Emma Mayerson, executive director of FCI, said in a press release.
In a ScopeAI visit, a trained medical assistant or community health worker meets with a patient while being guided by the platform’s prompts. ScopeAI listens, adapting in real-time, and then generates a full clinical report. This includes a preliminary diagnosis, a treatment plan and a justification log for its decisions. Every recommendation is reviewed and approved by a license provider.
An Akido provider can oversee a whole team of medical assistants conducting the visits, allowing them to focus on higher-acuity and more complex cases. As a result, Akido’s street medicine teams can handle thousands of patients.
“That enables us to do team or personalized or whole person care for certain populations with a significantly higher level of capacity,” Prashant Samant, co-founder and CEO of Akido, told Fierce Healthcare in an advanced interview.
Community partners, to whom Akido provides medical services at shelters or other programs, are key to street medicine work. Launching solo would not be feasible, because outreach would need to begin from scratch.
“Getting people to trust the healthcare system is so difficult, especially if someone has been neglected or turned away so many times,” Karthik Murali, Ph.D., Akido’s head of safety net programs, told Fierce Healthcare in the same interview.
Eight in 10 people Akido cares for have a substance use disorder, per Murali. Medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) substantially reduce morbidity and mortality associated with OUDs. Opioid use, overdose and other complications often occur where care is unavailable, making MOUD particularly important to the unhoused population. Appointments in the traditional healthcare system may not be available for days or weeks. In 2022, only a quarter of adults getting treatment received MOUD.
With ScopeAI, Akido’s program can initiate patients on MOUD within four hours of initial contact. “With AI, we’re able to put lifesaving medicine into our patients’ hands and scale the healthcare that they get,” Murali said.
“There’s just a massive undersupply to both primary and specialty care available in any part of the country, and in some cases, we’ve gotten used to it. It feels normal to wait,” Samant said. But it’s not normal, or healthy, he added. In the first 10 months of 2023, unhoused people were involved in 25% of San Francisco Fire Department ambulance trips.
Akido has street medicine programs in Los Angeles and Kern County. They are entirely funded by Medi-Cal, which executives note is a financially sustainable model rather than relying on grant funding. In Los Angeles, Akido’s program serves 6,000 unhoused people, where two-thirds of unhoused patients see a provider on their first day of enrollment. The program is seeing a 70% retention rate at six months. Akido has been able to reduce ED visits by 40% in some areas.
ScopeAI is used across cardiology, endocrinology, pulmonology, rheumatology, primary care and street medicine today. It has been trained on over 10 million real patient cases, and improved alongside over 240 clinicians. In addition to its street medicine programs, Akido has a healthcare program in New York City designed to address specific chronic diseases for professional ride-share drivers.
Akido recently hired Matthew Siegler as its chief network officer. He was previously chief growth & strategy officer at NYC Health+Hospitals, the largest municipal health system in the country. He will be responsible for Akido Care nationally as the company expands in California and New York.
“We’re very excited to have him lead the health system that we’ve built under this AI-enabled program,” Samant said.
Founded in 2015, Akido’s goal is to leverage AI to tackle the provider shortage and democratize access to healthcare, particularly for historically vulnerable communities. In 2022, Akido launched Akido Care, a medical network that includes nearly 100 clinics that offer primary and specialty care. This supported the creation of ScopeAI. Akido works with commercial, Medicare and Medicaid plans. The company has raised over $100 million to date and is backed by Oak HC/FT, Y Combinator and others.