The Drive to Save Lives
EMRI implements a public safety system that's transforming lives in India.
by Molly Rose Teuke, July 2007
Venkat Changavalli , CEO of the Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) in Andhra Pradesh, India, has an important bottom line: determining how many lives his organization saves on a daily basis. To answer this critical query, Changavalli views a dashboard to review the number of calls coming into EMRI's call center; track the number of ambulances deployed; and distinguish emergency calls from administrative calls--sorting them by medical, police, or fire emergency. In addition, Changavalli can also track a patient's vital statistics at several points in the journey, which is how EMRI determines the number of lives saved. EMRI's objective is to save one million lives a year.
EMRI was launched in 2005, and it now manages the most extensive and quickest emergency response system in India. Planning for the system was complex. Interactive voice response, computer telephony integration, geographic information systems, and global positioning systems were obvious technology choices. Also included in the technology mix were Oracle Financials, Oracle Human Capital Management, and Oracle Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
Learn why Changavalli believes it is important for EMRI to be run with the kind of marketing strategies, performance measures, customer orientation, and partnerships that are more typical for profit-oriented organizations. For example, CRM is critical because EMRI's patients are its customers, and the hospitals that receive patients are also customers. EMRI wants to understand the processes and challenges of hospital admissions so it will become easier in the future.
Like most CEOs, on any given day, Venkat Changavalli can assess his organization's performance by reviewing a dashboard. But it doesn't track sales figures, productivity levels, or performance standards, nor does it lend insight into shareholder value—at least not in the standard sense.
Changavalli goes straight to a different kind of bottom line: how many lives did his organization save? As CEO of the Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) in Andhra Pradesh, India, Changavalli makes that number his primary concern. From there, he can drill down to review the number of calls coming into EMRI's Hyderabad call center; distinguish emergency calls from administrative calls and sort them by medical, police, or fire emergency; track the number of ambulances deployed, how many kilometers they traveled, and how quickly they arrived at the scene; and determine which hospitals received the patients they carried. All calls are taken at the Hyderabad call center, with ambulances dispatched locally from a group of 502 ambulances, or one for every 160,000 people.
He can also track a patient's vital statistics at several points in the journey, which is how EMRI determines the number of lives saved. "We have defined several parameters—pulse, blood pressure, and other vital statistics—that we measure at the time we meet the patient, at the time we hand him or her over to the hospital, and then 48 hours later," says Changavalli. "If the patient had bad vitals to start with, wouldn't have survived without care, and is still living 48 hours later, we count it as a life saved. Our aim is to save one million lives a year."
A Critical Need
EMRI was launched in April 2005 with US$35 million in funding from Ramalinga Raju, founder and chairman of Satyam Computer Services. Designation of 1-0-8 as the region's emergency telephone number followed. "Two hundred thousand people in India face medical emergencies every day, and 80 percent of hospital deaths occur in the first hour of admission," says Changavalli. "Five million lives were being lost every year, because there was no single number to call, no ambulance, no concept of free hospital care. Ramalinga Raju thought he could create value by creating an institution with one number, ambulance facilities, trained paramedics, and access to free hospital care—and integrate these so care is complete."
EMRI now operates the fastest, most comprehensive emergency response system in India, providing not only medical emergency response but also police and fire services under one roof. Its state-of-the-art campus houses a sophisticated call center, medical personnel who provide telephone guidance to emergency responders in the field, support staff, and research and training facilities. "The speed and degree to which they've accomplished this is startling," notes Roger Hixson, technical issues director for the Arlington, Virginia-based National Emergency Number Association (NENA). "They've implemented the type of PSAP [Public Safety Answering Point] or 9-1-1 center equipment at a level of sophistication that a fairly well-funded medium-to-large PSAP would have in the United States at this time. The difference is that our PSAP would have done that over the course of multiple years, and at EMRI they've done it within a year."
