Well, if you’re an emCall subscriber, all they have to do is look at your phone. Because as soon as you triple-tapped the Medical Help button, our secure servers instantly transmitted all the medical information that you’ve entered into your profile back to your smartphone and displayed it on our patented MITS Medical Information Transfer Screen. And that information is locked on the home screen, so that first responders can access it even if you can’t speak; even if you’re not conscious.
That information can be as extensive as you want: medical conditions, prescriptions you’re taking, medical devices such as pacemakers or insulin pumps, names of your doctors, and preferred hospital – even DNR information.
We can’t say too strongly how important it is that you enter as much medical information as possible, and update it whenever there are changes in your medical condition or in the drugs you are taking. Doing this only takes minutes – and those minutes mean the difference between getting the exact help you need and having to wait while the first responders try to diagnose you without any information.
And because the information is never stored on your phone, and only transmitted when you need it (and it disappears after 60 minutes) you can be sure that your personal medical history is protected.
emCall has partnered with COPS Monitoring – North America’s leading provider of professional monitoring services.
Their network of UL listed and Five Diamond certified monitoring centers is the largest in the industry and protects more than 3.4 million accounts.
Just as important as that network is the industry’s most highly trained staff. Every COPS operator has been through the proprietary Gradation program – the industry’s most rigorous training system. Operators receive 120 hours of classroom training, followed by many hours of one-on-one training with an experienced dispatcher in real-world situations. And the primary focus of all that training is the wellbeing of the people who need our support.
So, in an emergency, you can count on reaching a truly professional operator who will know exactly who you are, where you are, and how to respond to your needs.
But the best way to respond to a call for medical help is different from the best way to respond to a call for police help. Here’s what we do – and why.
When you triple-tap the Medical Help button, your app immediately initiates a phone call to a professional operator in the country’s leading 5-diamond monitoring center. You are connected directly to the operator, never put on hold in a waiting queue or forced to navigate a voice tree. Because you’re an emCall subscriber, the operator already knows who you are and where you are. And our geolocation technology updates every 5 seconds, so we can track you even if you’re in motion.
The operator confirms that you need medical help and then contacts the nearest first responders. (If you’re unable to speak, the operator immediately dispatches the first responders.) They already know who and where you are. If you are at home and have entered information about how to access your residence – gate codes, security codes, etc. – that information is given to the first responders. The operator can get in touch with the emergency contacts in your profile. And the operator can stay on the line with you if necessary until help arrives on the scene.
When you triple-tap the Police Help button, the protocol is completely different. In what is referred to as a Panic Situation, making a direct call to an operator can be dangerous. Why? Because if someone close by is threatening you, you might not be able to tell the operator what’s actually going on. That’s why, when the emergency signal reaches our monitoring center (in seconds), an operator will call you and ask for the Safe Word that you entered into your profile. If you are being threatened, you give a false Safe Word, and the operator knows that police should be dispatched immediately – but the person who is threatening you won’t know that. If the danger has passed and you want to cancel the call for police help, you give the correct Safe Word and the operator will know that no further action is necessary.
One additional important point – unlike in medical emergencies, the operator will not call your emergency contacts immediately. This is to protect them from getting involved in a serious police incident, which could involve the use of firearms. Instead, after a 30-minute delay, the operator will call those people for you.
