Tech Advances to Improve Emergency Response Time – Shub Basu, RedSOS

This is texturung TV. I'm Bonnie Schneider for Tech strong TV. Well, the increase in extreme weather events due to climate change has resulted in a rise in emergency situations requiring First Responders to handle a greater number of calls in Boston, Massachusetts.

For example, one recent paper found a 9% increase in local emergency medical service dispatches on Warm season days that had a daily maximum temperature of at least 90 degrees and on a national scale in the US a fire department responses are reported to be nearly 65% called for medical emergencies versus fires. So the demand unfortunately for these emergencies is on the rise and in response to this demand red Osos a private SOS service has developed a single button solution for sending fire medical or police help to your exact location in an emergency without voice activation today. I'm excited to be joined by Trisha Basu co-inventor and product advisor of red SOS joining me on techstrung TV, and now we're going to discuss how this app is helping to reduce emergency response times and its impact on the tech industry as a whole Dr.

Sub. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, thank you Bonnie.

Thank you so much for having me here. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got started with red SOS? Absolutely.

So my background have been working in the tech industry for almost 25 years and been through you know, different Technologies tax. You can think of, you know have worked in different kind of application with it ranges from Automotive application or consumer application B2B applications both in the hardware and software. So product building is my passion and you know for and helping combine technology with the Practical life problems is a passion that drives me and drove me to partner up with my partner Sam Manson who happens to be also a veteran in the Air Force and he and I struck together brought in different experiences and the need for having technology to solve one of the very critical items, which is address safety personal safety.

That's how we the this company and we've been there since 2015. That is really fascinating and your timing is perfect. Unfortunately because we're seeing an increase in an emergency events.

So how does red SOS help to streamline emergency response, especially in the cloud environment many of our viewers of tech strong TV work in a cloud native and they're in devops and they're interested in that technical angle. Absolutely. So look technology has done Evolution and technology is actually helped us to solve critical problems.

Right whether it is, you know, we always know that data is paying communication is king and you know Cloud infrastructure and how it has helped in kind of, you know, making this application's more robust more universally available anytime anywhere 24/7 without any human intervention. Like these are the kind of things that really the overall people's lives have been benefiting from technology Evolution red. So it's not an exception from that perspective.

We have written on the technology Stack The Innovation that happened whether you talk about communication Technologies the Advent of smartphone today 245 million users roughly 85% of us adults carry a smartphone always and people use on an average around a five hours. They are carrying and using their smartphones. These are statistics as latest as this year.

So very clear that the event we we didn't want to reinvent the will when it came to infrastructure needs. We didn't want to load people up with more number of gadgets and devices which we have done in certain aspects where it is absolutely necessary when it came to Emergency Response. Our fundamental principle is this there are 240 million approximately calls that are made to 911 in a year the 911 one of our we boast in the US about one of the best, you know, possible Lifeline that that is available to all of us, but they are also inundated.

And think about people people when they come to them when you pick up a 911 on call you spend a good like anywhere between six to 15 minutes. You never know. Yeah in an emergency situation having to articulate where you are.

What are you doing who you are Etc. Our objective are basic principle is to shave away that time the response time and therefore we built up completely integrated system using of course a cloud-hosted, you know, software platform using of course a pre-filled in already. We know the user our subscriber base who are actually riding on a platform.

You don't have to spend this 10 15 minutes to explain who you are. We have used GPS technology, which is also great Advent right Evolution that has happened there. So precise locations are transmitted and precisely who you are and what kind of emergency you're looking for is done to only tap of one button.

So the idea is are shaving Away really very critical like, you know, almost four to five or six minutes from offering you a personal emergency response, which is done through a private team that we have were only looking out for you. This is probably the most vital value proposition that we bring to the to our consumer base. That that does sound that way what were the challenges that you faced when you were creating this app and and especially in development?

How did you overcome them? Yeah, that's a great question. So obviously, you know, we ride on the passion that you know, we are going to build something from scratch.

However, the very important thing on product strategy and product development is we need to hear the listen to the voice of the customer. So we believe in Practical Innovation Bonnie, which means that you know, of course there are things in certain spaces where you have to be out there for 10 years down the line something might be mainstream here. We are dealing with a problem which is mainstream today.

So we wanted to hear the voice of our customers and to that extent we had been in the security, you know prevention aspect of business. We have built Hardware products earlier, which we had, you know, we have around 1 million customers, for example of that we heard the voice of those customers what they need an emergency response. I'll give you an example.

One of our subscribers they are so sticky to our product. They consider us some so much of a Lifeline that one day the network internet Network in their Community was down and she could not see one feature in our app, which is called a smart checking as a non-emergency daily checking feature. She came back to us asking that is everything right.

So how this is how much people depend on us basically on every day safety for themselves. We listen to this voices that was one of the primary aspect and inspiration of how we Define the feature set of this product idea was that we have to make things at least on their onset usability wise the most simple way to activate no voice required. No texting required just Tap a button and emergency whether you are not a native English speaker or whether you are, you know, having a heart attack.

Nobody should have go through that but things happen you should be able to Tap a button and that's all. To do within and the help is on the way when with this principle then we looked at the most appropriate text tag. We talked about shaving away time.

How do we do it? It has to be a fully autonomously working system right from the tap. There are three or four different things that are communicating with each other.

One of them is obviously the app infrastructure which is riding on the latest and greatest, you know operating system or the phone infrastructure that is evolving every year right with this new releases. We have to be mindful of that. We have to incorporate the best features at the same time.

Be careful about the backward compatibility with the previous version or previous operating systems, which uses might have second thing is on the cloud stack itself. What is the best way that we can have a distributed Cloud architecture? We can have a let's say there is a there is an emergency that breaks out in a city.

How do we deal with those Peak events without having the system to slow down so performance of this whole system to be irrespective of what kind of a demand or Peak demand it might happen users will get exactly the same kind of experience One Step activation and help is on the way our Operate our monitoring stations people who are trained completely using this, you know software platform as well as know how to respond to the emergency exact in a way. So it's a connection of three or four different systems that is happening autonomously with want evacuation. So we address the stat the architecture from that way tops on red SOS ensure the safety and privacy of users personal information during these emergency situations.

Excellent question Bonnie because this is obviously top of our concern right every user has it first of all, this is not an app that is actually tracking you on a daily basis. So first thing that we need to take care of, you know, we are mindful of all the gdpr compliance, you know issues or requirements that are there every data that a user saves with respect to emergency response when they need it. Is saved with the user's consent right up front?

Every other data that is not needed for example, a real-time location tracking we do not do that. We you only share locations when you activate in an emergency or when you are testing the app. We do not save those locations either.

With emergency responders like the fire medical and police needs to get your real-time mapping. That's where the 21st century Evolution on that system works. Even if you are on the Run, they need to get your data.

All of these tax selections that we do are extremely mindful of the Privacy, you know concerns of users number two is thanks to the industries adoption right on the you consider. Let's say the platforms are very host our AppSec. We have to go through every release which are view of this privacy policies and we would not be able to release it without prior information of any of this privacy.

If we by chance want to share data, for example, they will view it and they will probably reject it. The the third aspect is that you know, this is a continuous process. We have to stay on top if anything changes.

Users need to be informed about anything that is changing and we do not intend to say any data to our application. Can you speak to the impact that read SOS has had on the field of emergency response and personal safety. What kind of feedback have you gotten from people that work in that industry?

Absolutely, absolutely. So a few changes the glaring changes that have happened. Number one.

I was telling you that an example is that somebody is on the Run they are not static in their home location right in that case how it's you think about it that you know, when we used to call 911 and you have to give the location that you are at your home or you're in a certain address or nearest location Etc today our app provides a real-time location. All a person has to do meaning whether it is First Responders first as well as your own context that get notified or they don't need to have an app. They just get a text message.

They click on a link and they can see that where you are on the move. Right a very important event that has happened which is that, you know emergency no matter where you are. You get a real-time update of the patient.

This itself has helped tremendously second is because of the availability of this precise GPS location. Let's say you're not at home. You are somewhere away completely.

I can't send. A police responder for example from your hometown when you are away. So finding out precisely at that location.

What is the nearest responder can help tremendously shaving away that response time right instead of going through a common dashboard and the common operator who is taking the call trying to understand all the situation. It's a huge impact helping to reduce this response time and there is one other aspect one if I might touch upon is during the covid times. We we saw this need when we were actually not being in close contact with several of our relatives our grandparents our parents Etc or children and so on so smart chicken is such a future in our app actually which allows you to without necessarily calling texting or doing anything.

It's a feature where you can just tap on a button the app itself reminds you to tap on a button and your nearest contact is going to know that you are safe that day right or that week whichever frequency you choose. Yeah, I think that would be helpful, especially when people have trouble reaching people by phone and and things like that in the event of an emergency is read SMS available on all platforms right now. Yes, it is available on Android and iOS.

So both platforms support Venezuela's. Well a doctor showed Basu co-inventor and product advisor for red SOS. Thank you so much for joining me on techstrong TV.

We're looking forward to hearing more about red SOS and how it's helping those stay safe in the events of emergency. Thank you. Thank you so much fun.

Thanks for having us. Sure. We'll stay with us on Tech strong TV.

We're going to have a lot more coming up.