Saving Time When You Need It Most With the right tools in place, thanks to TomTom Telematics, the company's Emergency medical technicians can reach the scene faster - and as a result, they can concentrate on what they do best, saving lives.

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No two industries are alike. Each sector faces its own unique challenges, and businesses within those sectors have specific KPIs they need to deliver on. For businesses in the emergency medical services sector, time is of the essence. Seconds can mean the difference between life and death.

For a company like Redicure EMS, how quickly an ambulance can reach the scene of a medical emergency is at the very heart of its value proposition.

"Every day we have another chance to save a life," says Rosert Manamela, an emergency care practitioner at Redicure. "But to do that, we need to be able to get to the scene on time."

Racing the clock

Redicure has a strict policy that all ambulance drivers stick to the rules of the road at all times. "We have lights and sirens, but we still need to be safe. You can't assume everyone else sharing the road with you has heard or seen you."

The company's entire fleet utilises TomTom Telematics devices for this reason. "We're able to receive up-to-date information on traffic within the area as well as alternative routes. When you're racing against the clock you don't have time to consider your different options — you need an immediate plan of action that will get you where you need to be."

Thanks to this platform, which links each vehicle on the road with Redicure's control centre, the EMS provider's promise to all of its clients is that an ambulance will be on the scene within 15 minutes. Because vehicles are tracked, the trained emergency care practitioners — who are both monitoring the vehicles and in contact with the client who requires emergency services — can keep everyone informed from the control centre.

Pushing the boundaries of innovation

After two years operating in the medical emergencies sector, and based on their relationship with TomTom Telematics, the team at Redicure began to evaluate what else they could do to support the safety and wellbeing of South Africans facing a medical emergency.

"WEBFLEET is open API, which means it can integrate with any other applications you have," explains Rosert. "We understood the value TomTom Telematics had brought to our business by enabling us to get to emergencies as quickly as possible, and so we started thinking about what else we could do with this technology."

The answer was instant access to Redicure in the case of an emergency. "Once you solve the problem of how quickly an ambulance can reach you, the next challenge is how quickly you can get hold of an ambulance. We approached this problem with an understanding that in an emergency people don't always have all the information they need on hand — who should they call, can they get through, and how quickly can the control centre gather all the information they need to be able to dispatch an ambulance? All of this wastes precious time."

In response to this clear need, Redicure has piloted the Redicure app with Tshwane University of Technology across its six campuses. Each student has been encouraged to download the app. In the case of an emergency, one push of a button immediately sends a signal to Redicure's control centre, complete with who needs medical assistance, all of their contact details, and most importantly, their location.

Through TomTom Telematics' WEBFLEET solution, an alert is then sent out from the control room to the closest ambulance in the area, and the client is contacted with up-to-date expected arrival times.

"We're changing the face of medical emergency response times, thanks to technology that enables us to get to the scene of a medical emergency more quickly and efficiently," says Rosert.

"We're also fine-tuning what we do on a daily basis, thanks to the information available through WEBFLEET. With TomTom, we're not only working with collaborators who understand our business, but support the development and growth of our services and products, allowing us to push the limits of what's possible in our industry."