Can technology transform emergency services?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 4 October 2021
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Getting to hospital in a medical emergency, in countries without a centralised ambulance service, can be critically slow. In rapidly urbanising Kenya, Vivienne Nunis meets Caitlin Dolkart – cofounder of Flare; a company which created a technology platform to dispatch ambulances anywhere across the country. But how do you direct an ambulance without accurate maps? We hear from Humanitarian Open Street Map’s Ivan Gayton how open source data is improving heathcare outcomes. Image: Ambulance operator Paul Ochieng disinfects a stretcher at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, on April 17, 2020. Credit: Getty
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Business Daily with me Vivienne Nunes. Today we're asking what to do in a medical emergency. |
| 0:08.2 | For many of us, it means dialing a three-digit number. But what if, where you live, a centralised ambulance system simply doesn't exist. |
| 0:17.0 | We meet the entrepreneur who built one and has plans to expand the technology across East Africa. |
| 0:23.6 | There was not an issue around lack of ambulances. Everyone assumed that there must not be a 999 |
| 0:28.3 | because there aren't ambulances. We found the opposite to be true. It's just that most ambulances |
| 0:33.7 | are fleets of one or two. Accurate maps are crucial to any emergency response. |
| 0:40.6 | We hear how open source data is working to build location information in places big tech has ignored. |
| 0:48.1 | And I love Google. They do great work, but ultimately they map when the location of the nearest |
| 0:53.4 | Starbucks is commercially valuable information. |
| 0:55.8 | That's coming up in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:04.5 | Like many parts of Africa, Kenya is rapidly urbanizing as millions of people migrate from rural areas to the capital |
| 1:12.6 | Nairobi. In recent years, the city has spread further and further, with densely packed |
| 1:18.2 | housing and the traffic jams to match. But while cities across Africa are expanding quickly, |
| 1:24.9 | often key infrastructure, such as public transport, and a decent road network, |
| 1:29.4 | are sorely lacking. So are up-to-date address systems, and in some places, reliable maps. |
| 1:36.4 | So when it comes to seeking help in a medical emergency, there are a range of issues, |
| 1:42.2 | before one even gets to public health spending and training paramedics. |
| 1:48.8 | Yes, it's trauma. It's a fall from a staircase, but currently the child is drowsy. |
| 1:56.0 | I'm in an emergency dispatch centre in Nairobi and a call has just come through about a child that has |
| 2:03.0 | fallen from height. The women working in the dispatch center have dispatched an ambulance that was |
| 2:08.7 | relatively close to the scene to make their way to the emergency. The ambulance will be there in five |
| 2:16.8 | minutes and they've told them to put the sirens on and we can see on the screen here in Ms. Moly, the ambulance will be there in five minutes. |
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