| L-R: KMES Founders, Dr Tanmay Mahapatra, Rita Bhattacharjee & Dr Rajib Sengupta at KMES call centre |
Kolkata Medical Emergency System (KMES) was born out of a very real and urgent need for an efficient emergency medicine system in the country. The founders of this venture, Dr Rajib Sengupta, his wife Rita Bhattacharjee, and friend, Dr Tanmay Mahapatra, realised that the ‘Ambulance-only model’ was woefully inadequate when it came to providing sustainable and effective emergency services to a diverse country like India.
Raison d’être
The founders felt that an ideal medical emergency system should comprise three essential stages:
- Sense – locate the nearest facilities
- Reach – get to the facility under proper-care
- Care – handled by the respective facilities upon arrival
They found that while the ‘care’ part was being handled effectively by the hospitals, ‘sense’ and ‘reach’, two important aspects were severely lagging, and thus sought to bridge this gap. They chose Kolkata to begin their venture as they felt that as a very congested metropolis in India, its emergency medical system was deplorable.
The aim was to optimally utilise the golden hour of emergency, stabilise the patient at point of contact and transport him/her to the nearest facility as soon as possible under proper care. So, while other emergency service providers have launched different types of services (such as ambulance services, neighbourhood critical care units), KMES founders chose to integrate the existing services for better utilisation and enhancement/strengthening of the services, as required with the proper tool-set such as product, people or processes – for e.g. providing paramedic training, GPS enabling etc.
The two key concepts on which KMES was founded by the social entrepreneurs were:
- Enhance and strengthen the existing service instead of introducing a new emergency service
- Empower citizens for crowd-sourced quick, response
Modus operandi
The project has created a centralised, real-time, integrated and mobile phone enabled medical emergency system in Kolkata. Designed to manage availability of the existing emergency healthcare facilities and products, the venture connects the medical emergency supply-chain to help people of Kolkata with information needed to make crucial, life-saving decisions. People availing this service can easily get vital information on urgent care, the availability of critical care unit (CCU) beds and blood products. The whole enterprise works in collaboration with Kolkata’s primary hospitals and blood banks. KMES gathers and broadcasts data in realtime to the general public, healthcare providers, and emergency responders through multiple channels; provides technology infrastructure, supply chain management support, and engages the citizen in a bid to operate a highly functional system for medical emergency care.
KMES data enables citizens to act fast with purpose during a medical emergency. Citizens, regardless of their socio-economic status, can access data through multiple channels (Phone, Internet, SMS etc) to help a family member or a fellow citizen during a medical emergency. Along with the general public, doctors, caregivers, smaller hospitals, nursing homes, ambulance services, police, fire-fighters also gain easy access to real-time blood and bed information resulting in lifesaving interventions.
Sui generis
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Patient receiving onsite care
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The vision behind the formation of KMES was to establish a system which would be similar to North America’s 911 or UK’s 112 systems. Yet the similarity ends pretty much at the concept level. Realising that the socio-economic situation in India is very different from the US and UK, the implementation model of KMES is radically different from the 911 system. While in the US (and the UK) emergency healthcare is standardised and government financed, in India emergency healthcare is varied and disorganised. So, the founders faced the challenge of creating an effective EMS system where the quality and responsiveness varies considerably in areas within the same city. So, as is the case often, they hit upon a solution which was brilliant in its simplicity. Their formula was very simple – ‘Instead of competition let’s collaborate.’ And not only collaborate among institutions but bring general public in the mix, recognising the fact that in a mega-metropolis like Kolkata, government or private, no one can do this alone. Neither is it financially feasible or sustainable. The whole system is based on the premise that when proper toolsets (such as information) are provided to the general public they can do wonders.
Envisioned as an end-to-end centralised medical system, the founders of KMES, in the next phase called ArogyaCare, intend to combine, improve, fortify and manage the existing ambulance services in Kolkata. The idea is to equip the ambulances with GPS tracking software which would assist in capturing real-time location and availability information. They also aim to create a pool of paramedics and train them for recruitment by ambulances, hospitals, police and fire alongwith setting up a high-tech, multi-lingual emergency response centre to efficiently coordinate and dispatch the nearest networked ambulance and paramedic wherever there is an emergency. People who need help may also be able to get in touch through a mobile phone or a wearable device designed to send an alert to the medical emergency centre.
Kudos galore
Many have recognised the potential of KMES and have lauded the project even before it began operations. It was one of the eight winners of the 2012 Innovation Challenge organised by the Rockefeller Foundation. The project also received a $100,000 grant from the Foundation to set up the project and the Free and OpenSource Software (FOSS) platform used for operations by KMES.
The project has also won the 2nd prize for healthcare innovation in the Emergency Service Award programme conducted by AIIMS, New Delhi. The jury found the KMES model very innovative, yet practical and feasible, a concept which can be replicated across cities with varied emergency service providers with varying capability.
Recently, ArogyaCare, second phase of the KMES project, has been selected by Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) as one of the 65 Innovative Projects of ‘Stars in Global Health.’ Grand Challenges Canada is funded by the Government of Canada and is dedicated to supporting “Bold Ideas with Big Impact in Global Health.”
Exemplar endeavour
The project’s success lies in a workable and sustainable, strategy and that is replicable in other over-populated areas of India as well. Thus, the KMES project possibly could pave the way in reforming the dismal EMS scenario in India. It can also be implemented in other emerging countries of South-East Asia, Africa, and Latin America as they face issues similar to that in our country – densely populated urban areas with disorganised and fragmented EMS services.