This Time It's Different

EXPLAINER

- Poon King Wang

We can hack time with smart cities.

The United Hatzalah shows us how. Based in Jerusalem, it has 5,000 trained volunteer medics who are all first responders to medical emergencies. They come from different walks of life, including religious and secular Jews, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, and Christians. But they all have the same singular mission: to save all lives, regardless of race, religion or nationality.

From heart attacks to terrorist attacks, once the United Hatzalah receives an emergency phone call, it immediately dispatches its volunteer medics.

Ninety seconds.

That is all it takes on average, for its medics to arrive at an emergency in the city to start saving lives. And since its founding in 2006, it has saved 3.5 million lives.

The volunteers are so swift because of an Uber-like digital innovation called LifeCompass 2.0. When an emergency call is received, LifeCompass 2.0 first draws a geo-fence around the emergency’s location. It also matches and alerts the most suitable volunteer medics in that vicinity. It then guides them to the emergency with precise GPS directions, along the fastest route available.

The volunteers are swift also because of an old pre-digital innovation called the motorbike. Arriving within the 90s is not possible with ambulances. Conventional ambulances are simply too big. They can only travel as fast as the traffic. The slightest of traffic jams means it would be impossible to arrive within the 90s to start saving lives. Motorbikes, however, are much smaller. On them, the medics can zip in and out of even the most entangled gridlock. They can travel faster than traffic. They can arrive in the 90s.