Local patients of Beaumont Health will be part of the first wave of a service contract reached between ride-sharing companies Splt and Lyft.

Splt, a graduate of last summer's Techstars Mobility incubator program at Ford Field in Detroit, is expected to announce Monday that it has signed a contract with Lyft, the San Francisco-based ride-share company, to provide transportation for senior citizens to their non-emergency medical appointments.

The service is scheduled to begin this fall with patients of Beaumont Health.

Splt founder and CEO Anya Babbitt said she wants to roll out the service with health care systems throughout the Midwest this year and next and then go nationwide.

She said Lyft will provide the drivers. Splt will do the scheduling and handle insurance reimbursement, Medicare qualifications and reporting to health care systems.

Splt was founded as an app-based way for companies to launch ride-share programs for employees. Current customers include DTE Energy, Honda Manufacturing of Ohio and Magna International of America Inc.

Babbitt said the partnership with Lyft won't require seniors to use smartphones. She said Splt has developed a system that will allow patients to schedule rides through a website, by text messaging or by phone calls.

"More seniors are using smartphones, but they won't need to have one," Babbitt told Crain's last week while in Palo Alto, Calif., at a pitch event to would-be investors. She said Splt is raising a funding round of $500,000 to $1 million, which she hopes to close in the next three months.

"This deal lets Lyft focus on its core business, and it lets Splt focus on our core business, which is helping people connect to share rides," said Babbitt.

"It's our mission to connect people and communities through effective, affordable, safe and accessible transportation, and Splt's concept is a great way to deliver our services to the underserved," said Gyre Renwick, head of enterprise health care partnerships at Lyft, in a news release.

"We look forward to working with Splt with our non-emergency medical transportation companies in Michigan and beyond," said Dr. Paul LaCasse, vice president of the post-acute care division and diversified business operations at Beaumont Health.

Babbitt said she is hiring four software developers and two operations and business development employees to manage the increase in business, which she expects to mean an increase in revenue of $20 million over the next year. She declined to reveal current revenue.

In April, Splt won the $100,000 Pritzker Foundation Award at the sixth annual Clean Energy Trust Challenge in Chicago. In May, Splt pitched to venture capitalists at the annual Google Demo Day in Mountain Valley, Calif., having won the Detroit Demo Day contest at Grand Circus in March.

As part of her participation in last summer's Techstars program, Splt got $120,000 in funding from Detroit-based Fontinalis Partners LLC and Basking Ridge, N.J.-based Verizon Ventures.

This article was first published by Crain's Detroit Business.