Bringing Emergency Medical Services (EMS) to Ethiopia

The journey to create a deployable EMS system for developing countries

1. The Problem

With a population of over 107 million people, Ethiopia is Africa’s second most populous country. Unfortunately, Ethiopia does not have any 911-type emergency number to contact in case of emergency, no centralized Emergency Medical Services (EMS) dispatch center, and does not have the infrastructure in place to provide relatively quick emergency services. Even if they did, in a country where street names are limited, it becomes nearly impossible to accurately describe the location of an emergency. Along with unreliable infrastructure, including frequent power outages, road closures, and network outages, you couldn't just simply import an EMS system from a developed nation into this fluctuating environment.

2. Our Solution

Our EMS system — in operation at Nordic Medical Centre (NMC) in Addis Ababa since 2015 — is specifically designed for Ethiopia’s unique challenges. With time playing a critical role in any emergency response, having the ability to be immediately located could be the difference between life and death.

How it works:

A) The Service
Users - Smartphone Application
At the press of a button, a person in need of assistance is connected to the Emergency Call Centre (ECC), while their exact position is seamlessly sent in the background. Instead of wasting time trying to explain their location, they are immediately receiving medical help over the phone and can rest assured that the ambulance will be able to find them.

Dispatchers - Computer-Assisted Dispatch system
The dispatcher automatically receives the user’s location and can one-click dispatch an ambulance before they’ve even said hello! All while automatically passing on key details from the call in real-time to the paramedics.

Paramedics - Tablet Application
With ambulances (or alternative vehicles) equipped with tablets, our paramedics receive the exact location of the user and are shown the fastest way to get to the user. Key information collected by the dispatcher is also being shared in real-time with our paramedics, ensuring our paramedics are fully prepared to help the user as soon as they arrive on-site.

B) Processes & Training
To accompany our EMS system, we’ve also created the necessary operational protocols, and our Implementation Team (comprised of EMS operations experts, paramedics, etc) has provided the necessary training for the local staff utilizing the system.

Our goal is not to run these emergency services ourselves. We believe in empowering the local communities in running their own systems. We provide them with an EMS capability - including the technology, the processes, and the initial training and monitoring.

3. How we will change the world    

Having successfully operationalized Ethiopia’s first full-circle EMS system, along with thorough testing in a pilot project over the last 3 years, we are looking to expand our life-saving impact within Ethiopia, as well as start expanding into other developing regions in Africa. There are currently over 900 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa without proper emergency medical services. We dream of providing any community in developing regions, from rural to urban, the capability to establish their own Emergency Medical Services, and save lives along the way.

Our solution is a unique blend of new technologies and applications. Although the concept of machine learning is well known, its application in weighted node mapping of travel times and the creation of predictive algorithms for accidents and disasters, is relatively new. Furthermore, in utilizing various existing technologies, from smartphone GPS to telecommunications networks to cloud infrastructure, we have managed to consolidate a multi-step dispatching process into a single step. Our resilient cloud-based system also has the ability to adapt to the unique infrastructure challenges of developing regions, making it possible to launch an EMS system anywhere in the world.

Technology is integral to our solution in many ways. Firstly, our system is built upon the current wireless telecommunication network (2G phone calls/texts; 3G/4G/LTE mobile internet). It is also enhanced by the current technology trajectory - with smartphone penetration skyrocketing in developing regions, our solution will become increasingly accessible to all (we use smartphones’ GPS to acquire user location). With our system built upon a cloud infrastructure, it has the ability to adapt to the unique infrastructure challenges of developing regions, while connecting users, dispatchers, and ambulances via various specified Apps and modules.

With our system currently operating in the Addis Ababa region, over the next 12 months, our goal is to further expand our service to other regions in Ethiopia. In creating partnerships with other major hospitals across the country, we hope to work towards making emergency services available to all Ethiopians.
Currently in discussions, we also look to work with the Ethiopian government to establish an official National EMS capability.
Furthermore, we aim to start a dialogue with other developing regions in Africa, which would provide any community, whether urban or rural, the capability to establish their own Emergency Medical Services.

As a social and impact-driven enterprise, we believe in making our EMS system accessible to all those in need. Within the next three to five years, we aim to have our service implemented across all of Ethiopia (107 million people) and have helped launch a long-overdue National EMS system.
Furthermore, there are currently over 900 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa without proper emergency medical services. Over the next five years, we hope to implement our system in many of these regions, providing communities, both urban and rural, the capability to establish their own Emergency Medical Services.

In Ethiopia, there are two ways in which we can deploy our system at scale for everyone to use. The first, an ideal setup for smaller communities, involves partnering with hospitals in which they would operate their own dispatching center and first responders fleet.
The second deployment method is much larger in scale and involves establishing regional dispatching centers. This, however, is more resource-intensive and out of reach for many communities. Such a system is more suitable for cities like Addis Ababa (~6 million people), and one in which we are currently discussing in establishing with the Ethiopian government.

Our pilot project currently operating at Nordic Medical Centre (NMC) serves just under 1000 people. (We have purposefully hard-capped our number of participants at 1000, due to the size limitation of the hospital.) Most of our users are people registered with the hospital, along with many users from embassies, diplomatic and foreign communities in Ethiopia, most notably the EU delegation to the African Union and the NATO Joint Forces Command Naples. All our current users are extremely reliant on this system, as this is the only way to get emergency medical assistance in the country.

Over the next 12 months, we aim to start opening up the service to the general public of Addis Ababa (~6 million people). We will roll out the service in phases, as we increase our number of partnerships with other major hospitals in the city.
Within 3 years, we expect a few of the major cities in Ethiopia to be utilizing our system (~20 million people), with aim of having upwards of 50 million people have access to emergency medical services within 5 years.

Our team at Kiipo has all the necessary skills to succeed in scaling our service and making an impact. We feature teams of software engineers, data scientists, and an in-house Design Studio, that have successfully brought various solutions to scale in the healthcare sector. We are also supported by an Advisory Board made up of distinguished health specialists, scientists, academics, marketing leaders, disaster management specialists, and security specialists.
Having been involved in Ethiopia for many years, we also have a deep knowledge of the customs, practices, and regulations that are necessary to ensure success in scaling our service.

Our revenue model is based on an implementation fee, in which we bring in the team necessary to setup the EMS system and train the staff, and a minimal annual fee. The revenue collected is to collectively cover the costs of our teams working on this service. The more communities join, the cheaper it gets for everyone.
Kiipo is founded on the principle that everyone has a fundamental right to a healthy life. As a social and impact-driven enterprise, we strive to make better health accessible to everyone, and therefore believe in making our EMS system as affordable as possible.

We have embarked on a long mission, one that has already taken us 5 years, and will take many more to accomplish. But we have an opportunity to impact millions of people’s lives in Sub-Saharan Africa and will not stop until all of them have access to emergency medical services. We just need some help.
We hope Solve can help connect us with like-minded, influential individuals and organizations, who believe in our mission and can help us launch these EMS systems across Sub-Saharan Africa.

The greatest barrier to our solution succeeding is bureaucracy. The reality is that things take time when you’re dealing with public services, governments, or large organizations. Especially when it comes to implementing an entirely new healthcare service in many of these countries. That being said, we have created a solution to a large problem at the top of everyone’s list, and we have heard nothing but interest and enthusiasm from many members of the African Union.