Android Question Patient Locator?

[Mashiane]

Hi there

Assumptions: A person is in a rural area. There are no streets or roads going there. Where there are streets there are no physical addresses, it's just houses. The person has what we call a "tilili" phone, i.e. a smart phone NOT. Now, there is an emergency and the person needs to go to hospital, and needs to be fetched as soon as possible.

The person calls the hospital, the hospital wants to send an ambulance and now they are stuck as they don't know where the person is actually is. The nearest cell tower could be a kilometer away or more.

What is the best approach for a solution like this provided that..

1. People have a smartphone - NO.
2. People have a smartphone - YES.

Ta!

 

[Daniel-White]

1.- The Public Safety normally have a database with the land line phone number and match the billing address.
2.- GPS an fused library.

 

[inakigarm]

The person has what we call a "tilili" phone

Sorry, what's a "tilili" phone ?

 

[Mashiane]

Sorry, what's a "tilili" phone ?

A phone that is not a smartphone like the old nokia phones and others not having touch screens... lol

 

[Mashiane]

Here is an example of a "tilili" phone...

 

[inakigarm]

Yes, I remember "old" days..This was my first tilili phone (Motorola Startac)


(sorry for dirtying" the Post ;-)

 

[AHilton]

Even though we have a really good 911 / Emergency Services system here in the USA, there are times when it doesn't do much good. Such as you describe for your situation ... rural areas where addresses either are non-existent or records don't match reality. In your situation ...

When the person calls, does the receiving person know what the phone number is? ie. A display showing it automatically?

If the persons' phone has GPS / Location capabilities, does that show on the receiving end?

[Some of my background: I created 911 / EMS software for 25 years ... even before cellphones]

 

[Mashiane]

@AHilton, thanks for the feedback. Yes the receiving end will see the caller id from their end. In terms of GPS/Location capabilities, some phones might not have these but then again, I'd like to create an app for this area. Seeing that youve been working on EMS as you say, can you provide more advise on this field please. Thanks.

 

[AHilton]

Here in the USA, AT&T (actually, it's the hold-over from what we call the old "Ma-Bell" before the split up into AT&T and others) handles the Phone # <-> Address databases in a few regional centers around the country. That information is sent to the local/area 911 Dispatch centers so that the dispatchers can see where you're calling from (things are a bit more complicated with E911, mobile, and texting 911 but, still, the basics are the same for what you're talking about).

With the situation you're in, it's very much like the private hospital / flight EMS services, such that you're going to have to build a database that matches up phone #'s to physical locations (addresses if you have them .... GPS coordinates or maybe 'directions' such as "200 meters South of that hill known as Bald Ridge" or something like that) that responders are going to be able to work with to find the person ... or at least get close (they may be in the field and not at home).

So, a call comes in ... the person may be able to talk or maybe not. The dispatcher at the hospital sees that it is from cellphone # 12345. The software with the dispatcher does a lookup on that number in the database and sees that that # corresponds to a GPS coordinate of lat, lon. or of a 'directions' text. No other way around it. You have to have a subscriber service if you have no other automatic means to get it. That's what Ma-Bell does for 911 but just on a MUCH larger and automatic scale. The problem comes in keeping those records updated. HUGE HUGE problem. A nightmare, really, for any non-trivial-scaled project.

If the phone has GPS and (here's the kicker!) that information gets passed along to the dispatchers / receiving end, then things are much easier and accurate to where that person is actually located instead of where the phone # is subscribed to be (ie a home).

I'm not sure where an app is going to help you. Unless you're talking about the ambulance crew having smartphones and getting information from the dispatch center?

 

[Cableguy]

I can give my point of view since I was a land-line tech for a while...
Old gsm phones are hard to track geographically, but land lines do not move.
Here in France, when we were called to troubleshoot a land line, we were given all the line's breakpoints, starting from the central down to the last "before phonetap" point of connection. All these are very well listed with geographic coordinates based on Lambert 2.
At max, a client would be at 300m from the last PC he's connected to.
Some address we had to work with were "lieu dit" wich translates to something like "the place called...", And we always did manage to find them!

 

[Mashiane]

Thanks chaps for the feedback, appreciated, m learning more about this. Yesterday I remembered that here home, there has been a law named RICA, i.e Regulation of Interception of Communications and provision of communication‑related information Act. It is a law passed by the South African government that requires ALL cellphone users to register their numbers. When one is registering, they are required to provide proof of address using also their identity documents. Will ask around too.

What about a cell tower? Is there a method to identify these somehow?

 

[AHilton]

Thanks chaps for the feedback, appreciated, m learning more about this. Yesterday I remembered that here home, there has been a law named RICA, i.e Regulation of Interception of Communications and provision of communication‑related information Act. It is a law passed by the South African government that requires ALL cellphone users to register their numbers. When one is registering, they are required to provide proof of address using also their identity documents. Will ask around too.

Things may be done differently between here in the USA and South Africa so you're going to have to dig deep into the infrastructure there to get accurate information. With that said, cellphone registration is a joke. You can register any address you want. Therefore, you can't count on it being accurate. When a system counts on self-registration, it's in inherently flawed. Anyway, you said in Post #1 that there are no streets or roads and, when there are, there are no physical addresses. So, that won't do you any good.

What about a cell tower? Is there a method to identify these somehow?

Yes, but that'll have to come from the cellphone / phone company / EMS provider. Contact them to get what information they can provide you.

 

[Mashiane]

This is a very interesting brain-storming session.