1298's growing fleet of ambulances is providing much-needed emergency medical services in Mumbai.
The Challenge
- Mumbai is a city of 16 million people, yet it lacks any reliable ambulance or emergency medical response service. People find friends with cars, or use van “ambulances” that have no medical equipment or trained technicians to take patients to hospital. More often, these ambulances function only as hearses.
- The poor suffer disproportionately from the lack of these services because they face greater transportation challenges but have lesser means to pay.
The Innovation
- 1298’s focus is on providing service for all. Its business model uses a sliding price scale driven by ability to pay, which is determined by the kind of hospital to which patients choose to be taken. Those who are admitted to general wards of a Government Hospital – who are ultimately poor – do not have to pay. Approximately 20% of the services are offered free of cost or at subsidized rates.
- The ambulances are controlled by a 24x7 call centre that identifies the ambulance closest to an emergency and directs the driver.
- 1298 has also developed training programs, certified by the American Heart Association and New York Presbyterian Hospital, to train its own emergency care doctors.
The Impact
- 1298 is to grow in Mumbai from 10 ambulances (from Q1 of 2007) to 70 ambulances by Q1 of 2009.
- About 40,000 calls have been made in the last 3 years, saving precious lives.
- 1298 plans to scale across India – they are already establishing a franchisee-based network in Kerala.
- Individuals and corporations have begun to donate ambulances to 1298 as they see that this is a truly efficient and accountable way of providing life-saving emergency services to the poor.
- 1298’s model has the potential be replicated, not only in other Indian cities but also around the world.