A new decentralized and personalized mobile app called MUrgency is being set up to create a global emergency response to help people in distress in developing countries.
Brain child of Indian social entrepreneur Shaffi Mather, MUrgency is being launched by MUrgency Inc. in global partnership with Business Call to Action at the United Nations Development Program, Young Global Leaders at the World Economic Forum, Stanford ChangeLabs, Harvard Asia Center and MIT Global Health.
MUrgency is a cloud platform and mobile application which will connect people who need emergency response with their trusted network, other users of the app and/or credentialed medical, safety, rescue and assistance professionals as the situation requires and the individual in emergency requests. It will make the nearest emergency responder (doctor, nurse, EMT, paramedic, ambulance etc.) available to a person facing an emergency.
MUrgency Inc., the San Francisco based tech company which has developed this emergency cloud platform and mobile app joined the Business Call to Action (BCtA) with a commitment to assist half a million people at the base of the pyramid by the end of 2015 through the MUrgency platform.
All features of the app except the MUrgency Responder function are live as of today. Users can also set up a Trusted Network of friends, neighbours, and loved ones who will also be informed of the emergency and receive the user’s geo-location when the emergency alert is triggered. MUrgency App also has several innovative personal safety features built in. In addition, MUrgency has a communication platform that includes chat, video, audio and photo messaging.
The MUrgency Responder function is expected to be launched first in the Indian state of Punjab in August 2015 and reach full coverage across India by 01 Jan 2018. The Global Responder enrollment, validation and onboarding is done by Ziqitza Health Care Limited, India’s and the developing world’s largest emergency ambulance service company.
According to MUrgency’s founder and CEO Shaffi Mather, “It is well known that timely medical assistance is the most critical factor in saving lives. Unfortunately, it is not readily available to 90 percent of world’s population. At MUrgency, it is our mission to make fast emergency medical assistance available through the mobile phone to anyone, anytime, anywhere across the world by 2020 with just one tap on your phone.”
Field testing of the MUrgency model in Punjab, Dubai and Israel has shown that using this app reduces the response time to less than half of what it takes an ambulance in an efficiently run ambulance system to reach the emergency victim. In Israel, the model has brought down the average emergency response time from between 8 - 12 minutes to 2. 54 minutes (over 245,000 incidents in 2014).
Currently, 6.25 billion people worldwide lack access to a reliable emergency response system in case of emergency. Even the 0.75 billion people who can obtain reliable response often have to deal with enormous expenses and delays. According to WHO estimates, more people die from lack of timely care than from AIDS, TB and malaria combined. To address this situation, MUrgency is developing an emergency response system that is available to anyone with mobile network access.