In 2010 and 2011, we asked First Responders across the United States what they "love and hate" about the software packages currently being used in the course of their daily efforts.

Almost everyone who uses a digital system said they prefer it to paper, but users also identified several key deficiencies in most incumbent applications:

   •  rigidly constructed, requiring a professional to customize data entry methods and interfaces;

   •  they require redundant data entry;

   •  restrictively interoperable, so users can't "mix and match" the systems that best suit their needs;

   •   the companies offer poor customer service.  

Consider the request from the EMS System Director of a major Mid-Atlantic county.

Billing, clinical data collection, education and certification management, trauma reporting for state population health records – software that addresses these functions are plentiful in the marketplace, though they tend to be homegrown without a path to growth beyond the region in which they were founded.

Moreover, they cater to the current state of First Response, without seeking to "push the envelope" and craft innovations that make the process better, faster, cheaper, safer.  They sell mainly through RFPs and custom quotes, with little transparency to the buyer about pricing or technical details, absent a bid or full-scale Request for Proposal.  And of course, both bids and RFPs require significant resource commitments. 

We've seen software offered that tacks on ancillary charges to boost profit centers, such as on-site training that can be done more economically through online seminars, for example.  And we know that several incumbent technology providers restrict interoperability with competitive systems.

Certain pre-hospital technologies – such as electronic patient care reports – have been standardized and commoditized.  But the challenges facing First Responders who lack cutting-edge technology – and perhaps more poignantly than most, First Responders in rural contexts where even mobile connectivity may be unreliable – has leapt to the forefront of American consciousness due to the mishandling of several recent and major natural disasters, which called attention to the massive will (but tiny budgets) that First Responders carry.  

Around the world, citizens in developing nations – from Brazil and India to Singapore and South, and across the Middle East (especially Qatar and UAE) – are demanding more sophisticated social services as their qualities of life increase.  (None of our competitors have a significant foothold beyond North America.)

•   List of NEMSIS 2 "Gold Compliant" Software

•   List of NEMSIS 2 "Silver Compliant" Software

•   NEMSIS 3 Compliance Information

By personally visiting medics, fire chiefs, sheriffs, military physicians, and other emergency service professionals nationwide (as opposed to "innovating" from an armchair...) — and studying cutting-edge research on First Response — we learned how the status quo of First Response technology has failed to meet the users' needs.