A 15-year old from Union City’s Jose Marti STEM Academy has developed an app designed to slash response times for emergency responders when calls come into dispatch centers.
Sophomore Lehansa Marambage has been working on the app for more than two years. When a neighbor of her family died after waiting for an ambulance for nearly an hour following a 9-1-1 call, she learned that many towns, including Union City, outsource their emergency calls to dispatch centers in other municipalities.
She decided to create an app which, with proper data, would directly send the emergency call to the proper location for help. It would eliminate the extra, time consuming step of going to a dispatcher who may not be trained in specific, emergency situations. For example, not recognizing signs of a stroke, which would cost valuable time in getting a first responder, in this case, an EMT and an ambulance, to them before it’s too late.
Or possibly a shooting or a fire, when going to the police department or fire department directly through the app, without the added step of a “general” dispatcher making the call for the proper first responder to be notified. Every second counts in emergency situations.
Lehansa’s app still needs real data from dispatch centers. She has been inputting her own data to create her program, but real data is much better and will speed the process of finalizing the app’s abilities and ultimately saving crucial time and lives.
Jose Marti STEM Academy Supervisor Nadia Makar has been assisting Lehansa in obtaining the needed data. The plan is to get a patent for the app.
Both Yale and Stanford have shown tremendous interest in the app. Lehansa has already received the national Lemelson Early Inventors’ Award for her project.
She plans to continue developing the app in order for it to function as best as possible.