In 2015, over 33% of deaths in developing countries were related to last-mile and time-sensitive medical emergencies that were not handled quickly enough. Battling entrenched attitudes where people often use taxis in emergencies or think of ambulances as used for carrying corpses, responders had typically struggled to find victims in densely populated and rural areas, and those in need of emergency care would often waste valuable time trying to direct ambulances to their location. We wanted to ensure that our emergency services get all the help they need to respond quickly to crises, so in partnership with the Vodafone Ghana Foundation, we launched the SnooCODE RED system.

SnooCODE RED is a family of technologies for public health and emergency services. It enables emergency responders to determine the nearest ambulance or hospital to a case and navigate easily to the emergency scene, improving response time and the case’s chances of survival. It is a derivative of their flagship product, SnooCODE, a digital addressing system that provides accurate location, ultra-fast route optimisation, compliance verification and proof of delivery functions, as well as integration into emerging and future technologies like drones and driverless cars – anywhere in the world.

Both SnooCODE and SnooCODE RED work offline, eliminating barriers for use like network charges or unreliable connectivity. The SnooCODE RED system for emergency services provides functionalities for two categories of users:

1. Emergency response administrators: receive and input the SnooCODE (6- or 7-digit alphanumeric code, e.g. COF-K8D) shared from the emergency site on a tablet with a SnooCODE RED Control Centre app that determines the nearest, most appropriate ambulance station or hospital available;
2. Ambulance drivers: can easily use the SnooCODE RED Dispatch app (which gives turn by turn directions on a pre-installed offline mapping system) to navigate to the exact location of the emergency, accurate to a precision of 6.8m on average and ±25cm with specialist equipment like drones. The Control Centre app is capable of dispatching a drone from the user’s location to the emergency site for a quick survey of the area. A live video feed will be transmitted back to the app by the drone and is displayed to the user through the application’s interface.

Through SnooCODE RED, emergency response times were reduced by up to 56% and outperformed DHL’s route optimisation efficiency by an average of 19.6% (38% max). Health workers can easily use this same route optimisation technology to make more visits within the shortest possible time. SnooCODE’s verification technology, which shows space-time-stamped evidence of service workers’ compliance without actively tracking them, was described by the World Bank’s Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP) as a sister technology to Blockchain – chances of falsifying data when using it are 1 in 60.7 trillion.

In sum, health workers (from EMTs to maternal health nurses) can make field visits to accurate locations within optimal time, verify their compliance, and in instances where they cannot physically access the required locations, dispatch drones without any knowledge in drone piloting, all using SnooCODE.