AI startups see opportunity in the public sector

A new company called Groundvue recently emerged out of stealth to use artificial intelligence to gather data from state and local municipal proceedings to help inform policy. Company founders say their platform will tap into $4.6 trillion in annual state and local government spending.  

So what? At a time when public budgets are crunched, this may seem like a counterintuitive move. But as the U.S. response to COVID-19 showed, good public health policy relies hugely on data—and fails when officials don’t have access to it. Recent policy changes, including new work requirements for Medicaid recipients and a federal clawback of pandemic-related funds, and other grant terminations, are putting fresh financial pressure on state and local health departments as well as health systems and clinics. But some new startups see an opportunity within those constraints

“We know that local governments right now are under a lot of strain,” Groundvue cofounder Shannon Arvizu told Second Opinion. “They're asked to do more with less. We think they deserve better tools.”

She says their platform can cut down the time it takes to do work that state and local government workers are already doing. 

Her company is part of a growing cohort of startups that aren’t courting big corporations or large academic medical centers with big budgets. Rather, they’re looking at how they can tap into the collective spending of public health departments, smaller health systems and clinics, and federally qualified health centers.

The premise of Groundvue is deceptively simple: public meetings hold vital information about how various state and local bodies are addressing major issues that affect the lives of Americans. And while this information is public, it’s hard to analyse and distribute learnings.