Saving Lives Just Got Easier: Decisions for Heroes Launches

I’m absolutley delighted to hear today about the Launch of Decisions for Heroes. Robin Blandford is a very smart guy and through his blog he’s been entertaining and inspiring people for the last few years and I’m glad to know someone launching such a worthy service.

To be frank it’s difficult to think of something that’s more deserving of praise than building a piece of technology that will help rescue teams save more lives.

Robin Blandford recognised that all rescue teams have three common challenges. “They have a lot of equipment to train in, massive communication logistics, and large amounts of paperwork to back it up.” explains Robin.

So what does Decisions For Heroes do? Decisions For Heroes was created to monitor response readiness, team availability, valid qualifications, and experience. Armed with a laptop and internet connection, 999 responders can record the details of their rescue operations and training exercises. The software automatically performs analytical charting, draws heatmaps, and benchmarks reports and such like to outline areas of strength, weakness, and expertise.

Organisations are granted the ability to share data and perform paperless reporting between their teams. Easy-to-generate statistics can be used to observe patterns, educate potential casualties, and reduce accidents in a community.

Robin writes for technology from his blog and in a great example of listening to what works and practicing what you preach he gathered over 1,800 rescuers from Ireland, UK, USA, Greece, and Australia to trial and shape the development of the software.

I have only one criticism. No free version. Robin has chosen NOT to go down the Freemium route which is perfectly reasonable from a business perspective. However it does create a few issues. I have several friends who work in Mountain rescue, I’d love to be able to recommend D4H to them but I can’t. Why? I haven’t seen it. I haven’t seen the software as there is no free version to kick the tyres with, I’ll be telling them to check it out and get in touch with Robin but they’ll have to pay to see how it works. That doesn’t make me overly confident that they’ll give it a whirl. This could be easily resolved with a demo account with dummy data so someone can see the system as it would work.

I’m also a great believer in letting your users use your software the way they think it should be used. I think Robin may have cut off the possibility of unintended uses. Often systems designed with a particular market in mind end up serving several they didn’t intend to. I fear that D4H’s potential outside of the rescue field may never be seen. And that’s a shame as I can think of several places where this type of task logging team management would be useful. An example might be sales teams or ESB or National Grid Engineering teams working on powerlines.

Robins press release reads “Decisions For Heroes is amazingly intuitive” I have no doubt it is but I can’t testify to that.

Today Robin launched ByteSurgery Ltd. to commercialise and expand Decisions For Heroes to emergency services around the world from local fire brigade to alpine ski patrols. I’m impressed with Robin anyway and I think this is a great product. If you’re a Hero you really ought to give him a call.

Update: Robin dropped by to tell me there IS a trial version and that teams who want to try it out can get in touch directly.