Uberising emergency services
It is interesting to find that one of the healthcare web apps most highly rated by Nicolaus Henke, who heads up McKinsey’s Analytics team and is a head of healthcare is Murgency, an app developed in California and launched in India as the world’s first emergency response app. Founder Shaffi Mather claims it has relevance to Europe and the USA as well, where call out times in remote areas can easily be 50-60 minutes and cost a small fortune.
Murgency puts nurses, doctors and paramedics through a training course and they are then free to respond to any emergency call. Call outs cost 350 rupees or just over $5.
The idea is to create a worldwide service, an international name which anyone can call. Here is an interview with the founder Shaffi Mather which explains the concept. He also founded Ziqitza Health Care, which is claimed to be the largest for-profit ambulance company in the developing world, and Lifesupporters Institute of Health Sciences, which is claimed to be Asia’s largest pre-hospital care training organisation. Various Indian bigwigs, including Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan and Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, are backing it. But, as is often the case when people try to build healthcare services businesses in the developing world, there are competing NGOs that could quash its business model.
CriticaLink is an NGO that trains emergency first responders and uses mobile technology to connect them with those in need. Launched in Bangladesh, where traffic conditions hamper the response of ambulance vehicles, CriticaLink aims to diffuse expertise in basic first aid amongst the populace, so someone is always close by to respond through the app. Yes, a first responder on foot does not a fully equipped ambulance make, but in places as poor and as congested as Dhaka, financial and practical necessity gives it a number of advantages.
CriticaLink was set to become one of the free services hosted on Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook’s, free app and internet service, which would have put it in the hands of one billion Indians. Indian regulators have blocked Internet.org on the grounds of net neutrality, but the project has gone ahead in Bangladesh.
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