Minimize travel time for Patients

Product Used: Route Optimization API

Background

Elderly patients often have conditions that make sitting in a vehicle for extended periods uncomfortable or even harmful to their health. For example, individuals with arthritis, severe back pain, or respiratory conditions can experience significant discomfort if subjected to long rides.

A NEMT provider in California is managing transportation for patients who need to attend physical therapy appointments at different clinics across the city. Some of the patients among them are elderly. Due to their fragile health and mobility challenges, the elderly patients are unable to remain seated for extended periods.

The NEMT provider is struggling with routing efficiency, particularly in suburban areas where the distance between pick-up and drop-off points was considerable.

Problem Statements

The NEMT provider wants to

1. Limit the ride time to such a duration which is comfortable for his patients
2. In case a trip can’t be completed within the specified period, the system should flag the trip as unassigned forcing the dispatcher to manually adjust the route or schedules.

Solution

NextBillion.ai’s Route Optimization API’s advanced features allow setting limits to the ride durations for transporting patients within an stipulated time frame. Once the user provides the ride time limits for the required trips, the optimizer sequences the pickups and drop-offs such that patients without less critical issues are picked up earlier in the journey, while the elderly patients are picked up later and dropped off within specified time frame.

Limit the time in vehicle

We use the `shipments` attribute of Route Optimization API to configure the pick-up and drop-offs of the patients. To limit the ride time of patients we use the `max_time_in_vehicle` property.

Once this property is configured for the required patients, the optimizer will sequence them appropriately to honor the constraints.

In case the optimizer is unable to complete the trip within the given time, it will flag the shipment as unassigned along with the corresponding reason.

Sample request and solution

Here is a full sample JSON request that we built with 4 patients which need to be picked up and dropped off at the medical center. 2 of the patients are elderly and have a limit on the time they can spend in the vehicle.

API Request

1
curl --location 'https://api.nextbillion.io/optimization/v2?key=<your_api_key>'   
2
--header 'Content-Type: application/json'   
3
--data '{...}'

API Response

1
{
2
    "description": "Limit Ride time for Patients", 
3
    "result": "{...}",
4
    "status": "Ok",  
5
    "message": ""  
6
}

In the response, we see that one of the patients which could not be transferred within the specified ride time, was flagged by the service as unassigned. The NEMT provider can take it up for further actions / re-adjustments.