4 Hyderabad Students To Develop Medical Emergency App
The proposed system would allow users to raise an emergency alert and share their location, help identify a nearby ambulance and provide navigation support.
Hyderabad: Four students from the city are developing ‘Sarathi’, a web-based platform designed to coordinate ambulance services, traffic police and hospitals during medical emergencies, with the aim of reducing delays caused by gaps in communication.
Ravi Raj Javvadi, Satvendra Giri Nihal Badam, Hrushikesh Anumula and Kalyan Reddy Bhoompally, all third-year Computer Science and Engineering students, conceived the project to connect the different stages of emergency response, from an SOS request to ambulance arrival and hospital handover.
“Our aim is to connect the entire emergency-response journey through a coordinated digital platform rather than disconnected communication channels,” Ravi Raj told Deccan Chronicle.
The proposed system would allow users to raise an emergency alert and share their location, help identify a nearby ambulance and provide navigation support. Once an ambulance is assigned, its location and estimated arrival time could be shared with relevant stakeholders.
The team also proposes to include in ‘Sarathi’ a feature for alerts for traffic police to help manage approaching emergency vehicles and advance notifications to hospitals so medical teams can prepare for incoming patients.
“Ambulance dispatch, GPS tracking and route guidance already exist in emergency services. Our focus is to bring ambulance personnel, traffic police and hospitals onto a common platform so they can access relevant information at the right time,” said Nihal.
The platform has yet to produce independently validated pilot results demonstrating a reduction in emergency response times. The students intend to measure the time between an SOS request and ambulance dispatch, ambulance arrival times, traffic-related delays and the time taken to communicate patient information to hospitals.
“We want to establish the system’s effectiveness through measurable results and controlled pilot testing rather than rely on estimates of time saved,” Hrushikesh said.
The proposed integrations with live traffic services, traffic police systems and hospital bed databases would depend on technical access, permissions and cooperation from the respective organisations. The team currently has no confirmed partnerships with hospitals, ambulance operators or government agencies yet and said they are working on securing them.
Developed as a progressive web app, Sarathi can be accessed through a browser and installed on compatible devices. However, poor internet connectivity could disrupt live tracking, remote dispatch and real-time coordination.
The students are exploring the use of Internet of Things devices connected to satellite communication networks to transmit emergency information from areas with limited mobile connectivity. This remains a proposed future development and is not an operational feature.
“Our immediate goal is to validate the core workflows and explore a controlled pilot in Hyderabad. Wider deployment would require collaboration with emergency services and evidence that the system works reliably in real-world conditions,” Kalyan shared.