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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