In a city like Bengaluru, being stuck in traffic is a part of life if you are a regular commuter. But whatever the city, it shouldn't be the same for an ambulance that is rushing to save a life. Unfortunately, we've all seen ambulances stuck in traffic jams, especially in busy metro cities, desperately honking to make their way through the motor maze. As a result, the ambulance driver is unable to navigate the route and reach the hospital on time. While most motorists try to make way for them, not many have thought of simpler solutions that don't require a drone or a helicopter. But seven-year-old Brinda Jain from Bengaluru did and she designed and created an app to help create faster corridors for ambulances to navigate across busy city streets.
Brinda, who hails from a family of doctors, has often heard conversations about emergency situations at hospitals and she herself has, on numerous occasions, observed ambulances being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Wanting to do something about this, she was motivated to develop an app which she called Ambulance Whizz. The tech savvy seven-year-old explains, "A few months ago, I joined WhiteHat Jr to learn coding and develop apps. As part of the course, we are asked to develop something unique that could solve a real-life problem. I chose to develop this app and the teachers there readily mentored me."
Talking about how the app works, she says, "The traffic police are not always aware of every situation in every corner of the city to help an ambulance navigate faster. With the help of my app, the ambulance driver first selects the type of emergency he is transporting from the various options available, like cardiac, accident, pregnancy and so on. Then the driver updates his current location before he starts to drive. On the other side, personnel who are at the Traffic Control Management Centre receives this information and helps the driver navigate better. They can help create a fast track corridor for the ambulance to reach its destination on time by deviating traffic accordingly, thus saving lives. This app can be downloaded only on Android phones."
This January, Brinda participated in WhiteHat Jr's Silicon Valley Programme and was among the top 12. As a part of this programme, she will be given the opportunity to Silicon Valley in the US - a region in California that is home to many start-ups and global technology companies - to pitch her idea to top venture capitalists. During this week-long experience where I be visiting in the month of May, she will also get to meet some of Silicon Valley's most noted entrepreneurs to learn valuable lessons on entrepreneurship, visit Googleplex - the corporate headquarters of Google - and interact with their engineers, as well as visit their Waymo facility to experience driverless cars and interact with their product managers. Brinda, who has plans to take this app forward to hospitals and make the most of it, says, "I am happy that my app has been selected among 7,000+ entries from across India after passing through several rounds of examination. I plan to add a few more features amd make it fully functional within three months."
