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.