California hospitals often have medical supplies they can't use, from one box of gloves to a truckload of masks. Free clinics nearby often pay extra for the same life-saving supplies, because they buy in small amounts and miss the big discounts hospitals get. MedCycle Network, a San Francisco nonprofit, has moved more than $4 million worth of these surplus  supplies to local partners  in the past two years to increase access to care. Now it is building an AI Matching Engine so community clinics get what they need sooner.

After 20 years of moving aid into war zones and wildfires, Eric Talbert took on medical surplus in his back yard

Eric Talbert, MedCycle Network's CEO, has moved medical supplies around the world for more than 20 years, including into war zones and after natural disasters.

"What I saw, and all of us in that space are keenly aware of, is the amount of surplus that exists," he says. "It's a supply chain issue, right? Just like every restaurant has surplus food."

MedCycle Network collects surplus  supplies and equipment from hospitals and gives them for free to nearby community clinics that care for people without health insurance. Everything MedCycle Network collects would otherwise end up in the local landfill. MedCycle Network weighs it all, so hospitals can report how much waste they kept out of the landfill.

Right now, matching takes a lot of manual work. Some supplies expire while they wait.

The supplies arrive in every shape and size. "Sometimes it's just one box of extra large gloves, sometimes it's truckloads of N95 masks… Multiple hospitals, multiple times a month, from all over the state," Eric says.

Today, clinics pick items they want online, and MedCycle Network's team does the rest of the matching, much of it by hand. The team looks at what each clinic has asked for, what it ordered before and how many patients it treats. They also talk with clinic staff about what they need most.

"It's a huge amount of manual labour, a massive  time suck, and then all the communications back and forth on both sides," Eric says. "So it's effective, but not the most efficient."

Speed matters because some medical products have expiry dates. "Otherwise the stuff just piles up and becomes expired," he says.

The new AI tool will send clinics an order. They just tap yes.

"The way we think of MedCycle Network is like an Instacart for medical surplus," Eric says.

Here is how the new tool will work. Clinics upload  what they need in an app. The AI Matching Engine will combine those lists with everything MedCycle Network knows about each clinic and check what is in stock. Then it will send each clinic a suggested order.

"We think you would like to have four boxes of extra large gloves and two boxes of masks," Eric says, describing a typical offer. "They can just say yes, or no, more or less."

A clinic with one closet decides when its gloves arrive

Every clinic decides whether and when to accept an order, because every clinic is different. Some have big storerooms. Others have one closet.

"Ship it yesterday because we're almost out, or ship it in two weeks because my closet's full," Eric says. "So they have control of the last step… so there's no waste."

That is why the suggestions have to be right. "We need these to be highly accurate offers," he says. "Otherwise we're just taking up people's time, which is the exact opposite of the impact we want to have."

MedCycle Network shopped around for a tech partner and picked the same one twice

MedCycle Network joined Tech To The Rescue in 2025. In January 2026, we matched the team with tech company 26bitz. In six weeks in 2025, 26bitz turned MedCycle Network's rough first version into MedCycle Delivers, the app built for clinics.

In May 2026, MedCycle Network joined our AI Impact Scaling Program to build their AI Matching Engine. The team met a couple of other tech companies and chose to work again with Andrey Tatarenko and 26bitz. "He knows our organisation, our culture, our challenges, as well as our strengths and what we're really building towards here," Eric says. "That's why we chose to work with them."

Eric says the program gives MedCycle Network access it would not have on its own. "We're able to meet, partner and collaborate with tech companies in ways we would not have otherwise."

Every dollar donated puts $3.20 of supplies in a clinic

"For every $1 donated, MedCycle Network is able to deliver $3.20 of supplies or equipment to a clinic partner," Eric says. MedCycle Network gets its supplies for free, so its main cost is moving them, and "technology allows us to move more, quicker and better."

Free supplies free up clinic money and time, so they can treat more people. Eric recalls what the director of one partner clinic told him: "I've already been able to reallocate $10,000 dollars in my budget, because I know I'm going to get those supplies from MedCycle Network for free."

"The impact is immediate," Eric says. "It's felt by our partners."

What MedCycle Network would tell a nonprofit starting its first tech project

MedCycle Network has now finished one project with a tech partner and started a second. Eric's experience offers practical advice for any nonprofit about to do the same.

Show your tech partner a rough version first. MedCycle Network didn't wait for a perfect plan. The team quickly built a basic app with AI coding tools, which Eric calls vibe coding, and handed it to 26bitz. "We had just kind of vibe coded [an app], just to be able to show what we were looking for," he says. "They really came in and did all the right things and helped us think through it, fixed it, cleaned it up, built the infrastructure."

Choose a partner who tells you when things slip. What built Eric's trust in 26bitz was a clear weekly plan, and honesty when it changed. "Here's what you can expect over the next six weeks: week one these three things, week two these three things," he says, describing their updates. When something ran late, they said so. "'Okay, this one has been delayed due to X, so it's now week three,' and then it happens," Eric says. "That piece, for me, having worked with a wide variety of vendors and partners for over two decades, really helped build trust."

Test with your most active users and your newest ones. Before the AI tool reaches every clinic, MedCycle Network  and 26bitz will host user testing sessions with a small group that includes clinics who know the service well and clinics who are new to it. "You want to make sure it's the right fit for your key partners," Eric says. That means "getting feedback from our power users as well as some folks who are brand new to us."

MedCycle Network wants to reach 250 clinics, up from 25

MedCycle Network works with more than 25 clinics in California today. It is growing in Southern California and plans to expand into Central California. Their goal is to grow impact by 10X to 250 clinics.

Eric expects the AI Matching Engine  to be working in three to six months. He hopes clinics will say, "This saved me and my clinic time and money."

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