Future Communities Institute, with Akido Labs, Five Keys, and ReImagine Freedom Launch the Bay Area’s First AI-Powered Safety Net Program
Delivering an Abundance of Personalized, High-Quality Care to the Region’s Vulnerable Communities and People Experiencing Homelessness
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 28, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Future Communities Institute (FCI) today announced the launch of the Bay Area’s first ever AI-powered safety net program in partnership with Five Keys, ReImagine Freedom and Akido Labs, Inc. (“Akido”). This new program will leverage Akido’s proven AI-enabled care model to expand the capacity of street medicine teams, empower community health workers to provide more services to more patients, and deliver human-first, personalized care at scale.
The Future Communities Institute will serve as the convener of this group, launching first with Five Keys, ReImagine Freedom and Akido Labs. Each partner brings unique contributions to the program — caring for specific communities, working within key geographies and sharing deep knowledge on delivering successful programs — creating a powerful environment for designing a whole-person safety net program that meets patients where they are and when they need that care the most. As the convener, FCI is co-designing an evaluation framework that prioritizes the expressed needs of each community and provides consistent data reporting across partners. The initial program is marked by Akido’s integrated care model designed with and for the communities it will serve. This is part of a broader effort to bring together leading voices from technology, public health, policy and non-profits to meet the needs of the historically underserved in a manner that empowers these communities and embraces technology to deliver an abundance of personalized care.
“It is imperative that we rethink care models and forge new partnerships that will allow us to ensure that our most vulnerable communities receive vital, life-saving services,” said Emma Mayerson, Executive Director of FCI. “This is a proven model of care built with the communities we serve and has been successfully implemented across multiple healthcare environments, including in brick-and-mortar clinics and on the streets with people experiencing homelessness. We are proud to bring this care model to the Bay Area.”
According to recent federal data, the San Francisco Bay Area saw an increase in homelessness of 6% year over year, with approximately ⅔ of unhoused residents living on the streets. Over the past decade, the Bay Area unhoused population has grown by more than 46%. This is also a population that overly relies on expensive emergency services – a 2023 San Francisco Fire Department report noted that 25% of all ambulance trips involve people experiencing homelessness. In addition to the increasing rates of homelessness in the region and throughout California, there are not enough medical providers to adequately care for these individuals, who are often living with complex medical and mental health conditions, such as diabetes, substance use disorders and serious mental illness.
By partnering with local, trusted community organizations, this new program will help thousands of people currently living on the streets access care — before they need emergency services. The program couples best practices in street medicine and enhanced care management (ECM) with Akido’s ScopeAI, the first AI system capable of running a comprehensive patient visit.
Akido takes a human-first approach by empowering Community Health Workers (CHWs) to run the first AI-guided visit tailored for the safety net population. Scope AI guides the CHW to perform an in-depth medical visit, allowing the CHWs to engage meaningfully on complex diagnoses and gather the precise clinical information needed by providers to inform treatment decisions, effectively extending medical providers’ oversight into every encounter on the street. For medically assisted treatment (MAT) for substance use disorders, the US average wait time for treatment is days. With ScopeAI, Akido’s Street Medicine program can initiate patients on MAT within four hours of initial contact.
ScopeAI is already in use across cardiology, endocrinology, pulmonology, rheumatology, primary care, and street medicine. It has been trained on more than 10 million real patient cases and continuously improved by feedback from Akido’s network of over 240 clinicians serving 500,000 patients. Today, ScopeAI supports patient visits in Akido’s Southern California clinics, with every recommendation — including diagnoses and prescriptions — reviewed and approved by a licensed provider.
“California is at the epicenter of the country’s homelessness crisis,” said Prashant Samant, co-founder and CEO of Akido. “Our AI brings critical healthcare services to some of the region’s most vulnerable neighbors — expanding reach in a system where the clinicians we’d need simply aren’t available. By addressing some of the acute healthcare issues facing the unhoused community, we can help set individuals up for broader success and be there with them for every step of their journey.”
About Future Communities Institute
Future Communities Institute is dedicated to strengthening the social safety net through the adoption of data-backed, human-centered solutions built in partnership with the communities they serve. FCI convenes organizations across government, healthcare, social services, and technology to drive collaborative, systems-level impact. For more information, visit futurecommunitiesinstitute.org.
About ReImagine Freedom
ReImagine Freedom builds economic power by investing in the leadership and enterprises of women and gender-expansive people excluded from opportunity. Launched in 2023, ReImagine Freedom builds on more than three decades of work by the Young Women’s Freedom Center and its family of organizations. Through business incubation, storytelling, and impact investing, ReImagine Freedom is scaling community-designed solutions that move people out of poverty for good.
About Five Keys Schools and Programs
Five Keys Schools and Programs is a national leader in second-chance employment and justice-focused services, driven by a single mission: to lift individuals and families out of poverty by providing access to education, housing, employment, and the tools needed to achieve long-term stability—strengthening communities and saving lives. Founded in 2003 by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, Five Keys is a California-based non-profit social justice, education, workforce development, and homeless services organization. It operates one of the largest justice-focused education and reentry networks in the state, including a high school program serving students in 16 county jails across California. Today, Five Keys employs more than 750 system-impacted staff and operates in 14 counties through 25+ programs at over 100 locations, including 16 shelters and permanent supportive housing sites statewide. Its work spans jail-based education, homeless shelters and permanent supportive housing, housing development and operations, and workforce development and transitional employment programs serving formerly incarcerated individuals, veterans, youth, and people experiencing homelessness.
About Akido Labs
Akido is a technology company that builds AI-powered doctors and delivers clinician-supervised care through its own multi-specialty provider network. Akido’s ScopeAI force-multiplies doctors, empowering them to deliver faster, more accurate, and more compassionate care. Today, Akido’s medical network, Akido Care, serves half a million patients across CA, RI and NY, offering primary and specialty care across 26 specialties. From serving unhoused communities in Los Angeles to supporting ride-share drivers in New York, Akido uses technology to close care gaps and bring healthcare to those who’ve been left out of the system as it strives to make exceptional care universal. Founded in 2015 (YC W15) by Prashant Samant, Jared Goodner, and Sanjit Mahanti, the Company is at a pivotal moment of growth—expanding risk-bearing care models and scaling ScopeAI, its breakthrough clinical AI technology platform. Read more about Akido’s $60M Series B fundraise led by OAK HC/FT. For more info, visit www.akidolabs.com.
Media Contact:
Sharna Daduk
Akido Labs
Sharna.daduk@akidolabs.com
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