48 February 28 • 2019
jn
B
eginning this month, late-mod-
el cars in Israel have started to
autonomously call for ambu-
lances when the driver has been
involved in an accident, reporting not
only the exact location of the crash,
but the specifics of the drivers’
and
passengers’
injuries.
This has not only dramatically
reduced response times, according to
Ido Rosenblat, chief information offi-
cer for Magen David Adom, Israel’
s
national emergency medical service,
but also enabled MDA to respond
with the appropriate equipment and
protocol for the injuries the driver
and passengers have sustained.
“This is particularly crucial in seri-
ous accidents, where a driver is ren-
dered unconscious and is otherwise
unable to seek medical assistance,”
Rosenblat said. “With the information
the system now provides us, we can
make immediate assessments about
what kind of response we need to
activate — whether it’
s dispatching
a Basic Life Support ambulance for
broken bones and non-lethal injuries,
a Mobile Intensive Care Unit ambu-
lance for potentially life-threatening
injuries, or even one of our Medevac
helicopters for instances when the
hospital is far away or when the near-
est hospital is ill-equipped to address
the injuries the driver is projected to
have sustained.”
The initiative is a joint venture
between MDGo, an Israeli tech
startup, and Magen David Adom,
considered among the most tech-
nologically advanced EMS organi-
zations in the world. The system
uses sensors already installed in
most new car models and designed
for a variety of purposes, including
locating cars when they’
re stolen.
However, by repurposing the sensors,
MDGo developed a system that can
determine the nature of an accident
(whether it involved front, rear or
side impact), whether the car rolled
in the collision, the speed and severity
of the impact and, using a series of
sophisticated algorithms based on the
impact, the nature and extent of peo-
ple’
s injuries.
In tests conducted with about
250,000 vehicles in Israel since June,
the MDGo system was 100 percent
accurate in reporting car accidents
and 92 percent accurate in projecting
the injuries sustained compared to
field assessments made by arriving
Magen David Adom EMTs.
The time savings is crucial, both
MDA and MDGo officials say. In
the chaotic aftermath of an accident,
it takes an average of five minutes
before someone — whether it’
s some-
one involved in the crash or a wit-
ness — even calls for an ambulance.
And that’
s during a daytime accident.
At night, it takes even longer, more
than seven minutes. With the MDGo
system, Magen David Adom is now
alerted in seconds.
Given the ramifications of delayed
treatment, especially when life-threat-
ening injuries such as brain bleeds are
involved, MDGo estimates non-pe-
destrian auto fatalities can be reduced
by 44 percent by this technology.
The collaboration between MDA
and MDGo was natural, the two
organizations say. MDA developed
in-house what’
s perhaps the most
sophisticated ambulance dispatch
technology in the world. It’
s also cre-
ated a cutting-edge consumer med-
ical emergency app for Israelis and
apps that enable doctors at emergen-
cy rooms to get preliminary data on
patients while the patients are still
en route to the hospital in the ambu-
lance. ■
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