Flare Emergency Response founders Caitlin Dolkart with Maria Rabinovich
(R) in an ambulance, at their Nairobi offices on December 27, 2017. .
photo | diana ngila | nmg
A tech start-up has launched an online ambulance service that
operates like a taxi covering Nairobi, a year after angel investors
injected Sh55 million to fund its establishment.
Flare
founders Caitlin Dolkart and Maria Rabinovich say their web-based
service ‘Rescue’ has enrolled 10,000 users mostly drawn from the
corporate members during a month-long pilot that has created a pool of
40 ambulances across Nairobi.
They respond to alerts round the clock.
“We
wanted a service that saves lives via prompt response and we have
tested the service, bringing down emergency rescue service to eight
minutes from the traditional two hours,” said Ms Dolkart.
“Swift
response means less health complications to a patient who receives
first aid from paramedics and evacuation to a hospital of choice,” she
said. The 40 ambulances are spread across the city according to
locations.
Ms Rabinovich said each participating
ambulance team has a mobile gadget for communication, ensuring the teams
were accessible around the clock. The service, accessed via any
Internet-ready mobile phone, enables the emergency response team to
locate a patient.
According to the report received at
the 24-hour nerve centre, an ambulance nearest to the patient responds
where a paramedic assesses the condition of the patient and alerts the
patient's hospital of choice.
The pilot was conducted within Parklands and Westlands in
Nairobi, helping the service provider to introduce an annual membership
fees of Sh1,500.
The service is being introduced a few
years after the American taxi hailing app Uber arrived in Nairobi, a
development that has brought forth competition from similar operations
and hived off a huge market from the traditional taxi players.
The
founders of Flare say they raised an initial Sh5 million from family
and private sources and a further Sh5 million from two US angel
investors a year ago, which went into setting up an office, IT platform
and hiring a staff of 10 that includes clinical officers, web developers
and account officers.
Ms Rabinovich, who built
electronic medical records and inventory tracking system for a chain of
clinics in Kenya four years ago during her international assignment said
several private hospitals now relied on privately owned ambulances,
easing the need to own an ambulance.
“We wanted
hospitals to concentrate on medical services provision and let logistics
companies operate ambulance services from a pool. This will save
everyone time and money while creating a new revenue stream for
hospitals and private companies that own ambulances,” she said.
Ms
Dolkart, who studied her MBA at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) said the service has created a phone contact database for all
participating hospitals where an alert is sent to a patient’s hospital
of choice — if they are conscious — ahead of their transportation to the
facility.
Ms Dolkart and Ms Rabinovich said the
national and county governments could subsidise the service to enable
more people to enrol at lower than the rate of Sh1,500 per user,
covering the principal member and their immediate family members.
“We
are averting a situation where a specialised doctor is called from
other locations when an ill patient arrives at a hospital; with our
medical alert service, the hospital is fed with information on the
patient’s condition when the patient is on the way. Time wasted means
loss of life or a patient going into a coma while swift response means
cheaper treatment for the patient and the community,” said Ms
Rabinovich.
“Competition among the various ambulance
companies will mainly hinge on offerings such as presence of paramedics,
type of vehicle, service level and price,” she said, adding that a
patient’s condition and location will determine the type of ambulance
released to the scene.
Some of the services available
are the advanced life support ambulance, basic life support and the
medical taxi service manned by a paramedic.
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