Healthcare
Bridge
10 February 2025
Transport should never block a patient's access to care.
Imagine this: waiting four days just to find a taxi.
For medical social workers, this isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a daily reality when arranging transport for patients in need.
Finding medical transport: An administrative nightmare
Healthcare providers like medical social workers (MSWs) spend excessive time coordinating medical transport for patients.
The process requires multiple emails and calls to find an available provider, coordinate patient discharge date and time, manage rescheduling and update funding approvals. For renal patients requiring recurring transport, this can take up to four days per patient.
🤯 81% of MSWs found transport coordination mentally taxing*
The lengthy, back-and-forth coordination creates a significant mental burden on MSWs, forcing them to repeatedly revisit cases to ensure transport arrangements are secured.
Throughout the process, MSWs experience constant uncertainty about whether transport can be secured in time. Delays can impact funding approvals, affect patient discharge and slow down bed turnover rates. On top of that, frequent changes in patient condition and unexpected updates from the medical team make it even harder to coordinate timely medical transport.
*From a survey conducted among 21 medical social workers working with renal patients
Our vision: Get medical transport in minutes, not days
Bridge connects healthcare providers with medical transport providers across Singapore, on demand. By consolidating all medical transport jobs onto a single platform, Bridge makes it easy for both healthcare and transport providers to track, confirm, and manage requests in one place.
Find medical transport in three easy steps:
Post: Submit patient transport details in seconds
Receive: Get applications from medical transport providers across Singapore
Choose: Choose the best option based on availability and patient needs
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A transport request posted for a renal patient
Current product focus: servicing recurring trips for renal patients
Medical transport requests fall into two categories:
Single trip: one-time transport for medical appointments
Recurring trips: ongoing transport for long-term treatment
The team decided to prioritise recurring trips, specifically securing reliable transport for renal patients traveling to and from dialysis centers so Bridge can deliver the greatest impact for both patients and MSWs in the shortest amount of time.
Why renal patients?
Patients with kidney failure require dialysis three times a week. Many face mobility challenges and are too weak to take public transport, making medical transport essential for their survival.
Interviews with MSWs revealed that coordinating transport for renal patients is the most time-consuming due to:
Complex handovers: Transferring patients and their existing transport arrangements between healthcare institutions (e.g., NKF) involves multiple steps and stakeholders.
Funding coordination: Dialysis center placements, transport services, and financial aid approvals require input from various organisations.
By addressing this single use case, Bridge can create the greatest impact for both MSWs and patients in a short amount of time. Additionally, the existing prototype, designed for recurring trips, can quickly be adapted to support single-trip requests, which typically involve less complexities.
What testers say
Throughout the development of Bridge, the team conducted extensive user discovery and user testing with medical social workers and transport providers. Here's what they have to say about Bridge:
📩 Bridge minimises back-and-forth communication
"With this system, it makes my life easier because I won't have so many email threads and correspondence to keep track of. I can just put up the request here."
~ Medical social worker, Woodlands Health
⏳ Bridge reduces time taken to secure transport
"I can save a lot of time with this job board because I can quickly cross reference with my vehicle availability to check if I can accept the job."
~ Operations manager, Transport provider company
🏥 Bridge improves patient access to care
"This is very important because it concerns the turnover rate of beds in hospitals in Singapore"
~ Head of Operations, Transport provider company
Why medical social workers love Bridge
Bridge lets MSWs spend less time arranging rides and more time supporting their patients.
The team tested Bridge with several MSWs, and all testers found it invaluable in eliminating manual follow-ups and reducing the mental load of coordinating transport requests.
Faster transport booking
MSWs can easily connect with multiple transport providers at once, reducing back-and-forth calls and emails.
Real-time updates
Bridge keeps MSWs informed on transport status without chasing for updates, ensuring smooth patient discharge and follow-ups.
Clear audit trail
All interactions with the transport provider are housed in one platform, allowing MSWs to provide supporting documentations required by their finance team and fund providers.
Why medical transport providers love Bridge
Medical transport providers too face significant administrative overheads, much like MSWs.
The team spoke to two providers, one large and one small, who shared the challenges they encounter daily. One company handles up to 200 emails and 10–15 phone calls per day while the other struggled with missed updates to transport schedules and the constant need to manually follow-up on patient discharge dates.
Less admin, more efficiency
Providers found Bridge invaluable in reducing manual work and time spent coordinating transport jobs.
More job opportunities
Bridge connects providers with transport requests from healthcare institutions across Singapore.
Optimised fleet utilisation
With Bridge, providers can reduce empty mileage and maximise vehicle efficiency by filling empty slots along planned routes.
Bridging the gap in Singapore's medical transport capacity
Currently, demand for medical transport exceeds supply in Singapore. Bridge enables more patients to get the transport they need, when they need it by:
👀 Increasing transport request visibility
Bridge gets every patient transport request seen by more providers, so patients get a ride as soon as possible.
📞 Reducing administrative overhead
Less time spent on calls and emails means transport providers can redirect resources to expanding their fleet, and healthcare providers can refocus on supporting patients on the rest of their healthcare journeys.
🚑 Maximising capacity of existing vehicles
By supporting transport providers to make full use of their vehicles, Bridge enables them to take on more jobs per vehicle and better meet demand.
What's next
🚀 Run a closed pilot
Bridge is currently exploring running a closed pilot with medical social workers from these healthcare institutions:
Woodlands Health
Ng Teng Fong General Hospital
Singapore General Hospital
Tan Tock Seng Hospital
🛠️ Build essential features
To onboard institutions for the pilot, the team will prioritise the following essential features:
Edit transport request: allow users to make changes to the service request
Email notifications: keep users informed in real-time on updates to their transport requests
Two-way comments: support seamless communication between healthcare and transport providers on service request updates
🔍 Explore more use cases
While Bridge currently focuses on renal patients, it can potentially support a wider range of medical transport needs:
Long-term transport for chemotherapy, rehabilitation, and home care transitions
Single trip medical transport for hospital appointments, patient transfer and discharge
The team will further explore these use cases to better understand their unique challenges and requirements.
Additionally, early conversations with Child Protection Services at the Ministry of Social and Family Development surfaced an opportunity for Bridge to support transport coordination for protected children travelling to and from school.
🚑 Try out Bridge at https://bridge.hack2025.gov.sg (opens in new tab)
Meet the team
The Bridge team and our lovely medical social worker partners 💗
Si Mun Tham | Rayner Loh | Amanda Tan | Tracy Hung | Tan Jue Ling | Wenjia Dong | Petrina Yeow