CHENNAI: Through the piercing darkness on the barely lit National Highway 48, Vimal, an ambulance driver, rushes towards the location shown on his phone. He has to reach the destination in as little time as possible, for he is the middle man between life and death. Barely 10 minutes prior to this, a control room in Chennai received a distress call from an uninhabited area on the highway and dispatched Vimal to the location. Vimal doesn’t know whose life he will be saving nor what condition they are in — an impossible situation, if not for the Avasaram 108 app installed on the victim’s phone.
Reach the unreachable
The Android application, designed to work even in places without Internet connectivity, is going to be a game-changer in reducing accident-related fatalities, say State Health Department officials. The app, launched by chief minister Edapaddi K Palaniswami in November 2017, is helping the government ‘reach the unreachable’, say sources.
“When people call at 108, especially from an unfamiliar place, they assume it is received by somebody nearby. However, it is the emergency response centre in Chennai that directs the call to an ambulance close to the callers’ location,” said an official of GVK-Emergency Management Research Institute (EMRI), the company that manages the app. The official, requesting anonymity, said that 80 to 90 per cent of Avasaram 108 calls come from rural areas.
“As accessing hospitals in rural areas is difficult, villagers rely on ambulance services. This is when Avasaram 108 comes handy. The app is user-friendly and requires a one-time registration. When a call is received via this app, the latitude and longitude of the caller’s location is captured, which helps us reduce response time,” said additional secretary of the Health Department and project director of Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project (TNHSP),Nagaraj S.
IIT’s technology
Clearing the air about the announcement made by then health secretary, J Radha Krishnan, that the application, once installed, will function even without Internet connection, state head of operations, GVK EMRI, Selva Kumar, said a technology developed by IIT-Madras called Dual Tone Multi Frequency (DTMF), was being used to serve people better. When attached to computers in the Emergency Response Center (ERC), the DTMF device would convert their voice into data to identify their location, which is sent to an ambulance driver who will reach the spot within 18 minutes, he said.
Although a caller need not necessarily have Internet connection, it is essential for the functioning of GPS-enabled ambulances. When a person with no Internet connectivity reaches out to the call centre, it will be possible to identify his/her location and send information as a text message and a link to the pilot application installed on smartphones of the ambulance drivers. Hence, Internet connection is only necessary to send the smartphone-armed ambulance drivers to the spot, the official said.
Currently, Tamil Nadu has 936 ambulances, including 64 neo-natal ambulances. Based on necessity, the State government will write to the Health Ministry, which in turn would provide these ambulances purchased through Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation Ltd., (TNMSC) under National Health Mission. The life of an ambulance off road will be five years, Selva Kumar said.
Being app smart
During the app’s launch, Radha Krishnan had said that ambulance drivers would receive smartphones worth `75 lakh, out of the estimated project cost of `80 lakh. According to sources, over `1 crore worth of investments have been put into the project. All the smartphones have been purchased through the Government eMarketplace (GeM).
Receiving calls through the app will help in scientific evaluation of accidents, said Selva Kumar. “If the app is used frequently, accident hot spots could be identified and a dedicated grid analysis would help officials to take precautionary measures,” he said.
State health secretary Dr Beela Rajesh told CE that her office has been working on ways to inform, educate and campaign for the app’s wider reach. Measures are also being taken to make the app accessible by persons with disabilities (PwD) on their special phones, sources said.
While administering first aid, Vimal realises that the nearest government hospital is 90 minutes away. He dials ‘100’, and a green corridor is created with police support. Thirty-five minutes later, hospital staff waiting at the entrance with stretchers receives the patient. Turning off his vehicle, Vimal heaves a sigh of relief at another job well done.