I feel like Ambulances/Hospitals charge way too much and using the app/tech at a basic level to connect the ambulances with patients addresses may be a good start for everyone and also the increase in supply may reduce costs.
Just read this thread - the way medical care is paid for in the US is batshit-insane, injured people not wanting to call an ambulance incase they lose their house - and reads like a history book about european medieval history. The solution is not more apps, it's a proper healthcare system like almost every other developed country.
We cannot propose a solution to the ultimate cause, because that would require the representative democracy to elect more scientists, technicians, engineers, and mathematicians to the legislature in lieu of the usual professional politicians, lawyers, corporations managers, and educators.
So we work on what we can reach.
We cannot create a proper healthcare system from the top down, but we can issue bugfix patches and hope they get adopted upstream. That keeps the system limping along, but never getting quite bad enough for anyone to demand the complete overhaul that it needs.
It only looks crazy because the biggest problem any motivated individual can solve is limited either by the amount of investment capital they can attract with their solution, or by the amount of campaign funding they can attract with their solution. So any proposals that threaten profit margins cannot be considered.
The US would be a better place with that hypothetical startup.
If Obama couldn't successfully reform healthcare long-term (as Trump will repeal it sooner or later), what can regular people do?
Let them make that app.
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/31/style/private-ambulances-w... (yes, over 30 years old, but most of it still holds true)
There's no theoretical reason why Uber couldn't get into the driving side of the business, with human drivers. Their future is in autonomous however, which will never be the ambulance business (it will never be autonomous, ambulance drivers frequently have to break standard driving laws in emergencies, drive at high speeds, drive around vehicles, etc).
And because they have to perform emergency medical treatment, right?!
Are we talking about different things - a mini hospital on wheels staffed by highly trained paramedics, and glorified taxis for the elderly/non-critical?
If it weren't for the need to drive in a "non-standard" manner, you could likely save on costs by having an autonomous vehicle staffed by an EMT. The EMT can't also drive the vehicle, after all.
None of these are reasons for ambulances to not be autonomous. If you accept that most other vehicles will be fully autonomous, ambulances do not require anything further extraordinary to also be autonomous. The vehicles on the road would likely be networked, at least within a nexus of proximity, and move out of the way of the ambulance so it could speed past them.
NB: I’m not saying ambulances will be autonomous. I’m just saying that if everything else is, the ambulances have no significant (technical) obstacle for also being autonomous either. A significant theoretical advantage of fully autonomous vehicles is not simply that the modal vehicle is safer than a human, but that a networked and autonomous fleet is hyper-efficient and hyper-aware as a hive mind.
Shoot, it'd be safer even if the ambulances weren't autonomous - because the cars would be reacting in a predictable manner.
You'll still need warm bodies in the back for life support, but I see no reason that the human in the front seat can't be replaced by sufficiently advanced technology.
Hell, in this ideal future where most or all of the rest of traffic is also autonomous, you don't even need to avoid congestion -- you just "phone ahead" along the route to tell any cars in the way to, well, get out of the way. As long as you don't have standstill traffic (which might actually be something you can eliminate as a general rule with a fully-autonomous, networked fleet), you're fine.
It’s a real mix though... paid fire dapartments, volunteers, and private operators all respond to emergencies.
ATM if my father (who had a stroke in early Oct) has to go to the doc there aren't many options - that I've been made aware of - other than me. My mother can't help him enough (without endangering both of them), and anything more traditional would just pull up and wait at the curb.
Long to short, the country - and 1st World - is getting old. It's a big market. The issue is how well technology is a fit, at least for the next couple generations.
p.s. I should know this but does Uber or Lyft deliver groceries? For less than the market?