Ingenious ideas rethinking emergency response

In Europe, 800,000 people suffer cardiac arrest every year and only about 8% survive. This is often due the emergency services response time. It takes approximately 10 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, but fatalities generally occur with four to six minutes.

By adding drones to the ambulance force in major cities around the world, Dutch design student Alec Momont aims to shave off crucial minutes in response time.

Momont's solution the Ambulance Drone is designed to carry life-saving necessities like defibrillators, resuscitation aids and medications. It’s capable of getting to a patient, within a 12 square kilometre radius, in just one minute - increasing the chance of survival from 8% to 80%.

Once at the scene, a paramedic can observe and instruct first responders or victims via live stream video connection - a feature that will make it much easier for untrained help to use the medical equipment.

In many parts of the world, blood reserves are still rarely available. As a direct result, there are currently 40 million people worldwide that can’t undergo surgery due to the high risk of bleeding to death.

While it’d be impossible to ensure an endless supply of blood on demand, one young German designer, David Wojcik, has come up with the next best thing. A device that can instantly and safely 'recycle' a patient’s own lost blood.

As the patient is losing blood, either due to injury or surgery, it can be collected in a vessel, filtered and cleaned through the Bloop device and then put directly back into the body.

Depending on the location and resources available, Bloop can be scaled up or down to meet the needs of any clinic or hospital.

According to the World Health Organisation, approximately 60 million women in developing countries give birth each year with only the help of an untrained attendant or with no help at all. As a result, they risk contracting an infection, which accounts for nearly one in five maternal deaths.

JANMA is an affordable clean birth kit to provide the mother with a safe, clean and hygienic delivery whether she delivers at home, at a primary health care centre or in a government hospital.

Packed in a reusable jute purse, the quality, low-cost components include an under-pad, sterile gloves, surgical blade, cord clamp and soap.

The kit is sourced and assembled in India by local women and is distributed through an established network of local pharmacies, clinics and hospitals.

Making clean delivery kits widely available will help reduce rates of infection and will substantially decrease maternal and infant mortality.

During the height of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, local hospitals were completely overwhelmed. Due to this lack of capacity, general patients were denied the treatment they needed - leading to more than 11,000 deaths.

“I was so shocked to see that in the 21st century, in the age of innovation, that we were still not ready for an epidemic outbreak,” says designer Ilteris Ilbasan. “This is our time to be proactive, not reactive.”

When disaster strikes, Ubuntu is the backup solution that every remote hospital needs. The low-cost containment bed can be quickly assembled to ensure prompt care of patients and reduce the spread of disease.

The bed is made from lightweight and space efficient materials, including locally sourced bamboo, zip ties and disposable sheets of Tyvek®.

The Tyvek® sheets function as both a mattress and a barrier between the beds. They’re also printed with easy-to-understand instructions for putting the bed together.

For the price of one standard hospital bed, seven Ubuntu beds can be produced.

By reducing time spent on logistics, health workers can focus more on patient care and reducing the risk of secondary contamination.

When a person falls unconscious, it’s not uncommon for the tongue to fall into the back of the throat and block the airway. Without intervention, brain damage or death can occur in just four minutes.

Developed by designers from Imperial College and the Royal College of Art in London, the appropriately named Tongue Sucker is an emergency tool designed to keep the tongue in place to prevent suffocation.

Simply squeeze the brightly coloured bulb, place the opening over the tip of the tongue and release. Once in place, the first aider is free to perform CPR, call for help or assist other casualties.

The Tongue Sucker was inspired by the 2005 London bombings where first responders had to cope with an unprecedented number of casualties. The designers identified the clear need for a simple device that anybody could use to free the airways.

The lack of infrastructure in many low-income and remote communities makes it near impossible to get to a hospital quickly. In an emergency, some may be able to call for an ambulance, but many have no other option than walking to the nearest clinic.

The Bambulance is a low-cost ‘ambulance’ designed to transport the sick or injured across rural terrain. The stretcher can be easily attached to bikes and various other modes of transport.

“We’ll adapt it to the most appropriate form of transportation in the given location and set of needs,” explains one of the designers Niki Dun. “At the end of the day, the bike seems fastest but it can be pulled by a person, bike or even a donkey.”

The stretchers frame is made from cheap, lightweight and locally grown bamboo and can be easily assembled and operated by one person.

Rolled out in western Kenya, locals also received technical training and skills to manufacture an initial fleet, as well as training to manage and maintain the life-saving service.

“We are really trying to create a project model that is truly community-focused and collaborative,” says Dun. “We believe this approach is critical in order for the project to be truly sustainable.”

When disease outbreaks occur, communities are often underprepared. And in severe cases, can be left completely defenceless. Of all disease-transmitting insects, the mosquito is the greatest threat, responsible for several million deaths and hundreds of millions of cases every year.

AIME (Artificial Intelligence and Medical Epidemiology) is a company using big data and artificial intelligence to help predict disease epidemics.

The platform can then forewarn governments, organisations and medical facilities, enabling preventative public health efforts to be quickly rolled out.

In 2016, AIME worked with Viva Rio, a Brazil-based NGO, and the government of San Paulo to prevent the spread of Zika and dengue virus in Brazil — just in time for the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

During tests of their dengue prediction platform in Malaysia and Brazil, AIME predicted where outbreaks would occur with 84-88% accuracy in advance of the outbreak.