Walking around Health 2.0’s exhibits and stepping in on their panels and demos, you see a lot of portals, services, apps, what-have-you’s on patient adherence/engagement, EHR reform, comprehensive health data analytics, aggregating wearable data, and the likes. Don’t get me wrong, these are all extremely important issues and many of the biotech companies I saw tackle these problems in unique and innovative ways. But there is something pretty refreshing about stumbling into a startup presentation that finds an overlooked problem and proposes a solution. Take ProAlert, part of the Iron Yard accelerator program, dedicated to helping the Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) save lives by saving time.

ProAlert identifies problems the current first responders face: lack of time, outdated dispatches without directions, and that the first responder has to lug around a giant binder or scroll through a large PDF file to find the right treatment protocol. With their app, they created an all in one solution that receives the dispatch with patient location and complaint, includes GPS loaded with directions, and the protocol already loaded in searchable format so that scrolling and flipping pages is a thing of the past. With their app, all the critical information needed is in the first responders hand in an instant.

See my other articles on the Health 2.0 coverage here, and here.