PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — At just 17, Ranvir Gill is making his mark.
While working at Care First Home Health as a data analyst, he noticed they were losing money due to a high volume of unnecessary emergency visits, and that patients with real emergencies were experiencing extremely long wait times.
“In my head, I was like, how can I help both the home care agency save these lost billable hours, but also the patients who are suffering from these absolutely outrageous, to be honest, wait times?”
His solution? CheckFirst, a digital triage platform he created that allows patients to input their symptoms and medical history so the novel machine learning model can decide whether an ER visit is necessary and where to go if not.
“But what this does is it helps bridge that gap of misinformation, especially nowadays, considering the recent closing of the Crozer health care system, the trauma care crisis is honestly crumbling,” he said.
After piloting the technology across more than five home care agencies, non-critical visits dropped by 39% over six months. Gill said his parents, who are immigrants from India, instilled in him the value of hard work.
“There's nothing more comforting and satisfying than being passionate about something, but then putting in the time, the effort, to see measurable results, and every single new partnership, every patient I help, that's just reinforcing that fact.”
After he graduates from the Haverford School, Gill plans to further his education and learn more about health care and where the inefficiencies are. He wants to work towards creating policy and addressing the health care system in as many different ways as possible.
“My overarching mission is I want to redesign health care from hopefully the ground up,” Gill said.
During Black History Month, KYW Newsradio’s GameChangers honors individuals or organizations that have made a significant, positive impact in communities of color in the greater Philadelphia region. View the 2026 honorees here.