Global 911

Emergency response is hugely important both during and outside of a pandemic, but the majority of the world does not have access to a 911-like system. We are committed to solving this problem. 

Our solution involves integrating ambulance networks, using an Uber-like approach and technology, which has worked successfully in Kenya. Currently, we are looking to scale throughout the country, and eventually aim to grow throughout East Africa and globally. While there is no centralized service, there are available first responders and ambulances who are able to respond once coordinated. 

Today, millions have emergencies in places where there is no coordinated system to help. Our solution has the potential to help everyone who does not have a reliable number to call in an emergency. From people with COVID-19 to expectant mothers, we are focused on connecting people with health facilities safely, and will continue to do so as we scale.

Everyone is likely to experience at least one emergency event during their lifetime, requiring faster time-to-care in an ambulance. Given that the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading at an alarming rate and putting immense pressure on health systems, we expect that likelihood to increase in 2020. Despite this, many people do not have access to an ambulance. In Kenya, most emergencies are never attended to. Calling an ambulance involves spending hours calling hundreds of providers individually. There are plenty of ambulances, but lack of coordination forces people to take a taxi, walk to the hospital, or not receive care at all.  We know that the faster an individual receives care after an emergency the more likely they are to survive. The “golden hour” is defined as the hour immediately following a traumatic event when healthcare is most effective at preventing damage and increasing chances of survival. Every minute saved improves chances of survival by 8%. Without 911, billions around the world are 10x more likely to die in an emergency, and many more during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Flare leverages existing ambulances and aggregates them onto a central system. Using today’s latest technology, our system automatically routes providers to emergency scenes using Google Maps navigation. Flare is cloud-based, mobile-first, and easily scalable. This makes it possible for us to be able to work in places like Kenya, where nearly everyone has access to a mobile phone, and means that we can grow much faster than traditional systems. 

We established and launched a world-class dispatch center in Nairobi with medically-trained heroes (humans), who leverage our technology to make the best possible decision for the patient and dispatch ambulances instantly. They provide over-the-phone care and ensure each patient is received by an expecting and prepared health facility. Today, patients simply call one number, which routes to our dispatch centre. Our innovative membership product, Rescue.co, ensures that everyone has access to our emergency response network. 

COVID-19 will cripple low-resource setting health systems unless we bolster capacity and coordination now. We are: 1) expanding our ambulance fleet; 2) preparing all ambulance teams, including over 2,000 EMTs, through training on infection control and proper PPE use; and 3) procuring PPE for our ambulance partners to ensure they are kept safe.

Our solution benefits anyone who has an emergency and requires immediate medical care. On average, that is 3% of the population. We cover everything from maternal complications to road traffic accidents to heart attacks. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our utility will extend to anyone who is a suspected or confirmed case (anywhere from 5-20% based on other countries), and requires more critical care and hospitalization. Today, we have completed thousands of rescues for every segment of the population - babies to 99-year olds, rich to poor - but we know that emergencies disproportionately impact those without access to healthcare, and the majority of the patients we save are from low-income households. Our vision is that no matter who you are and no matter where you are an ambulance should only be minutes away. We aim to ensure that every individual has access to lifesaving care when they need it most.

Given the current COVID-19 pandemic, we expect that the percentage of people who need ambulance services will increase drastically in 2020. Despite this, many people do not have the access they need. Our solution will benefit anyone who has an emergency and requires immediate medical care. On average, that is 3% of the population. We cover everything from road traffic accidents to heart attacks to expectant mothers, who need to reach a health facility. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be a critical component of public health by safety transporting suspected and/or confirmed cases to care.

In the US and Europe, emergency response systems rely on outdated landline frameworks that require a widespread addressing system and multi-billion dollar investments to set-up. Landline infrastructure is nonexistent across many emerging markets, and addressing is limited, which creates a unique opportunity to design, develop, and implement a more advanced system. Unlike traditional landline systems, Flare is cloud-based and runs on a mobile phone and laptop. It is easy to set-up, easy to use, and is a fraction of the cost of landline systems. Flare utilizes technology to bring together a distributed network of ambulances onto one centralized system, and automatically routes ambulances to emergency scenes in seconds, both increasing efficiency and saving lives.

Flare’s cloud-based software coordinates vehicles onto a real-time digital map. In an emergency, the technology selects and dispatches appropriate ambulances automatically, thereby collecting real-time data, reducing the potential for human error, and ensuring response quality in life-threatening situations. 

We provide ambulances with smart phone devices for GPS tracking and Google Maps navigation. We operate a 24/7 dispatch center, where emergencies are managed by professionally trained medical dispatchers. 

We have digitized the way people receive care, making it easier to call 911 than ever before. Everyone has access to Flare through our innovative membership model. We have integrated our technology with rideshare companies, which connects drivers to Flare automatically by pressing an SOS button on their app. We are working to identify when someone needs help through leveraging wearable smart technologies, and are constantly finding better ways to connect 911 to the actual hardware of devices through Emergency Location Services.

The technology is new, but the systems we are building around that technology are truly changing global emergency response. Not only are we building a system that previously did not exist, we are building it much smarter and better with tools of the future.

Since launching Kenya in 2017, we grew our provider network to more than 500 ambulances (as large as London Ambulance Service), have responded to over 20,000 calls, and provide emergency response coverage (and peace of mind) to over 50,000 individuals. We reduced response times by 87% and saved over 2,500 lives. Currently, we are developing operations in our second country and plan to be operational there in mid-2020. During this unprecedented emergency, we aim to expand coverage to all in Kenya, so everyone has access to healthcare if they need it, as well as the peace-of-mind that comes with knowing they have a number to call for emergency help.

One in 10 people die in emergency situations in places without 911. Without our solution, that statistic will remain. The problems we are solving will only become larger as cities grow, and additional stress is placed on dated and incomplete emergency response infrastructure. With close to a billion people living in African cities in 20-years, an advanced solution for emergency response is paramount to ensuring safe, healthy cities for people across the continent. We are actively working to make sure that people in cities can access basic services that make their lives better, easier, and ultimately allow them to survive emergency situations. Through our inclusive membership, technology, and systems (activities), we provide increased access to emergency response services and reduce time-to-care (outputs), and minimize societal-level morbidity and mortality, while providing peace of mind to all (outcomes).

Currently, we are providing 50,000 people with emergency response coverage. In one year, we aim to reach 100,000, and over 2-million in in 5-years.

In the next year, we aim to manage the COVID-19 pandemic within Kenya and begin operations in our second country, where we have been working to build a presence. Over the next two years we will be fully operational in three African cities, providing emergency response access to over 500,000 people. Over the next five years, we aim to be fully profitable in our initial three cities, and to have a strong presence within the top 10 cities in Africa. In the next five years, we aim to have a network of over 2,000 ambulances across 5 countries. At that scale, we expect to save 25,000 lives, and sell over 2-million memberships, giving members peace of mind and booking more than $10-million in annual revenue.

Several barriers currently exist for us to accomplish our goals.  

Health - COVID-19 is a barrier to progress for health systems around the world. It necessitates business like ours to rethink our model, shift to meet demand in areas like training and education, and bolstering data collection efforts.

Financial - We need help with initial capital to set-up our tech and scale operations. We know that within 2-years of operation we can turn a profit, but the initial 2-years require the funds to be able to set-up the needed infrastructure before we become cash flow positive. 

Supply - From a market stand-point, to quickly set-up our system we must rely on existing providers (ambulances). There may be cities or countries which lack the available supply and make it much harder for us to move into at this point. We believe, however, from our research that there are plenty of markets that are literally waiting for us to arrive. 

Market - Each city and country is different. It will be important for us to spend significant time in each market during our exploration and implementation phases to understand the differences and how we should adapt our product. We want to be sure our product and systems are geared for scale-up globally, and are not over-engineered for Kenya. We don't believe this is the case, but that is why it's important for us to implement global pilots now across varying geographical settings.

Our strategies for overcoming these barriers include:  

Health - We are facing the barrier of COVID-19 head on by providing increased training for health providers, securing additional PPE for our partners, and establishing partnerships within Kenya to manage triage and contact tracing at key health facilities.

Financial - We will  continue to build out our investor network and apply for grants, like MIT SOLVE, to help subsidize and support our initial launch costs.

Supply - We will do our research and ensure we only launch initial pilots in communities that need / are ready for our solution.

Market - We will hire locally to make sure our teams represent the pilot cities and countries, and we will ensure they are empowered in their unique ability to adapt our solution to work in their communities.

N/A

Full-Time: 25

Part-Time: 0

Contractors: 1

Flare is powered by world class experts in healthcare, data, technology, and operations. Our team has decades of experience in health and technology, and unmatched levels of passion and enthusiasm. Our dispatch systems are led by experts in ambulance management and emergency operations. Our software is built and managed by a team of top-notch software developers. Our business team is broad with vast experience in finance, accounting, marketing, sales, and customer support. All of our work is done in a data-informed way, thanks to our amazing team of data scientists. Over the past two years, we have built a company from scratch that helps thousands of people every day, and we are dedicated to increasing our impact as we scale.

Our solution rests heavily on partnerships. Today, we work with hundreds of EMTs across dozens of private, public, and NGO hospitals and ambulance companies. We leverage the existing resources in Kenya and aim to do the same in our expansion countries - bringing them together into one response platform. We often think of our larger team as including these hundreds of EMTs as they are the heroes that we dispatch every day from our control room to emergency cases throughout Nairobi and the country.  

During COVID-19, we have partnered with a number of organizations (NGOs, other private sector partners and Government)  in Kenya to deliver emergency services specifically to women. The initiative - Wheels for Life - brings together partners including physicians, taxi drivers, funders, and us to ensure that women are able to safely deliver at health facilities despite the curfew and shift in focus on COVID-19.

Everyone will have at least one emergency in their lifetime. Our solution impacts all people from the very young to the very old, and every health challenge from road accident victims to expectant mothers. The value we provide is faster time to care. We know that when individuals reach care within one-hour (the “golden hour”) they have higher chances of recovery and survival. 

We offer an affordable membership for annual access to our services, much like micro-insurance, to ensure that people are able to financially access an ambulance, and that there are no delays in care, when people need it most.

We generate revenue primarily through the Rescue.co membership product. Additional revenue will come as we develop our new model of charging our key partners (ambulance, security, fire, and municipal partners) for premium enterprise features. The distribution channel of the membership is through our Rescue.co website, the app, and through corporate sales.  

Our key resources are our people, including customer relationships, and essential partnerships with ambulance providers, health professionals, governmental players, and businesses. Our key activities include horizontal and vertical growth, and our key partners, which include customers, advisors, and health sector professionals, are essential to this growth.

At Flare, we believe that everyone should have access to emergency help in minutes. Our revenue generation model was designed to ensure financial sustainability at scale. We offer a micro-insurance product which is sold to businesses, individuals and governments. The micro-insurance ensures that when you need an ambulance you do not need to pay anything further (removing barriers to access) and includes all the costs to run and service the insurance. The price of the membership is affordable and accessible to most in the countries where we operate.

Our main motivator for applying to Solve is to gain access to the incredible network of cross-sector entrepreneurs and change-makers within the MIT network. In particular, we would love to partner with key players in a similar space to help fuel our growth, particularly as we expand beyond Kenya. We are in the process of piloting County-level partnerships in Kenya, and would appreciate mentors that can help us navigate the challenges involved in ensuring our solutions are available not only to those who work within certain companies, or have access to private funding, but to everyone. Our focus now is on ensuring financial sustainability of our system, while facing the COVID-19 pandemic head-on in Kenya and building public-private partnerships to ensure equal access for all. We believe the Solve network is perfect for this challenge, since it is such a global group of innovators, who are well versed in bringing solutions to global scale.

We are looking for top-level advisors who have scaled businesses before and understand the complexities, trade-offs, and decisions involved. We would be interested in linking up with the vast alumni MIT network (we are already part of it as Caitlin is an alum!) but through an official platform, while also accessing specific professors with MIT Sloan. 

On the marketing, media, and exposure side, we are building our campaign, brand, and reach within Kenya and beyond. We would benefit greatly again from advisors, experts, and faculty who specialize in marketing and branding, and can help advise us in this area.

Please see the answer above. We would love to partner with MIT faculty, especially within the Sloan School of Management, alumni, and other Solve teams to build partnerships by extending our services in other countries or extending our product reach.

The COVID-19 outbreak necessitates suspected and confirmed cases to be transported to appropriate facilities safely without causing harm to others. During a global emergency like this, other emergencies must continue to be managed and handled with care, including car accidents, heart attacks, and pregnancy complications. In places like Kenya, where a curfew is in place limiting travel, people need access to approved vehicles for transport to health facilities. Flare is providing that peace-of-mind to thousands who know that they have a reliable number to call for help when they need it.

We qualify for The Elevate Prize, as our priority is the health of others. During this difficult time, we are putting our own safety on the line through our dispatch work, business operations, and surveillance projects. We are on the front-lines of the response, as ambulances are key to the COVID-19 response. Our teams are responding daily to these cases. According to a recent article by the NYTimes, paramedics and first responders are one of the riskiest professionals - we are ensuring they have the right training and PPE. Our dispatchers and teams are working around the clock to respond to the increased number of emergencies, including maternal emergencies at night during the curfew. We have also seen a rise in mental health issues due to the uncertain times and economic downturn, which we handle directly. Without our services there would be a steep rise in the number of emergencies left unhandled.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a strict curfew is in place in Nairobi, which has been a massive opportunity for Flare, as we are uniquely positioned to get people to care safely when they are unable to get there themselves. As female founders, we are connected to many pregnant women throughout the country who worry about getting to the hospital to deliver their babies. Access to facilities during childbirth saves lives and prevents unnecessary childbirth complications. On average, 2,500 babies are born each night. As female leaders, we are passionate about providing safe transport to care for everyone who needs it, and especially expectant moms. With support from the Innovation for Women Prize, we will continue to scale our solution beyond Kenya to ensure as many moms as possible have access to reliable transport to health facilities for labor and delivery.

We qualify for The People’s Prize, as we address three of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being: The mortality rate is unbelievably high in countries without 911 and the risk is high - nearly 3% of the population will experience an emergency requiring rapid access to care. This spans across all diseases, diagnoses, and injuries, including childbirth and postpartum complications; cardiac- and neuro-emergencies; road accidents; chronic conditions, like epilepsy and diabetes; severe illnesses; and the list goes on. Emergency response is central to an effective health system for referral transfers as well as critical life-saving rescues, where every minute saved can improve the chances of survival by 8%.

Goal 9:  Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure: We have drastically reduced the cost and time it takes to build, set, and scale an effective country-wide 911 infrastructure. With Flare, setting up and digitizing a national network of providers takes days instead of decades (like in the US & Europe). Today, we can scale to a new market for a fraction of the billion-dollar cost of traditional 911 systems (less than $1-million per country). 911 infrastructure is an essential part of growing cities, markets, and countries, but it has historically been incredibly costly and time consuming for governments (or the private sector alone). Our cloud-based infrastructure is easy and fast to set up, and makes more sense for countries without widespread landline infrastructure. This critical infrastructure, in addition to connecting patients to emergency care, allows for collaboration, quality control, and regulation of the distributed emergency response sector and industry. By using the same tools and protocols, we can monitor operations, availability, and quality of care across a large group of public and private providers on the platform, offer incentives for better or faster care, and provide more revenue opportunities for the emergency response businesses on the platform. 

Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities:  Previously, less than 1% of Kenyans could access ambulance services. With the average income of a Kenyan family standing at around $200 per month, a fee of $75-100 for an ambulance (making up 50% or more of one's income) is not an option. We sell a rescue membership for $2 / month and oftentimes much cheaper to larger corporate groups or organizations. Our subscription product is now affordable to more than 70% of the Kenyan population, and most are considered low income.

With funding from The People’s Prize, we will scale our solution beyond Kenya to provide effective emergency services to as many people as possible around the world who lack it.

We aim to scale our solution to all regions without 911 to achieve our long-term vision: no matter who you are and no matter where you are, emergency response is only minutes away. Over 3-billion people across 96-countries lack emergency services. Everyone can and should have access to 911-like services. Our technology (Flare) and membership (Rescue.co) provides a scalable way to do that within our lifetime. 

The opportunity to impact billions is clear. Last week, we responded to a priority-one case - a motorbike crashed into a pole, while swerving out of the way of a bus. It was a 35-year-old male with a wife and 3-month-old baby. We were able to save his life through fast emergency response. In Kenya, 33% of women deliver outside of a health facility and transportation challenges are a main contributor. Facility care has the ability to reduce nearly all infant and maternal mortality cases - our solution is well positioned to help. 

We will use the Future Planet Capital Prize to scale our efforts throughout Kenya and set ourselves up to scale throughout East Africa (population of 444M). Our aim is to continue to respond to more emergencies every day, week, and year. Our team and technology are ready to scale and with the right partner and funding. 

Everyone will need to access emergency services at least once in their lifetime and likely several times. Together, we ensure that billions don’t lose their lives prematurely or become disabled, due to the lack of such a fundamental system and infrastructure.