Prototype to Product
By: Britt Jensen
Tags: Emergency Response, First Responder, Prototyping, Software Development, Mass Casualties

Prototype to Product

Peak Response is an open source software system that provides emergency first responders with simple documentation, powerful sorting, and streamlined analysis capabilities that fit into the workflow of complex MCIs (mass casualty incidents).

The Birth of the Idea

The initial idea for Peak Response (originally called NaTriage) was born during the November 2019 regional Tech to Protect challenge hosted by NIST PSCR. For those of you who don’t speak the language of government acronyms, this is the branch of the US government responsible for “advancing public safety communications technologies.” This challenge was aimed at fostering technological innovation for EMS professionals.

Drawn to the public safety mission and the opportunity to work with the first responder community, Francis Li joined dozens of other developers in San Francisco for an intense weekend of “hacking.” With an interest in improving EMS response efficiency, Francis decided to focus on building a tool that would reduce the time spent on documentation. He knew documentation was one of the most detested parts of the job for many emergency first responders who had gone had gone into EMS to save lives, not fill out forms.

By the end of the weekend, Francis had produced the very first working proof of concept demo and won the “Top Overall” prize as well as “Best in Category” prize for the “Organizing Chaos” group focused on patient triage during catastrophe.

Participants of the regional Tech to Protect challenge in San Francisco hosted by NIST PSCR in November 2019.

Francis receiving the “Best in Category” award.

Building Beyond the Proof of Concept

After his success at the regional Tech to Protect challenge, Francis was invited to continue developing the idea in preparation for the national competition in May of 2020. I joined Francis in early 2020 to grow the proof-of-concept prototype to an alpha prototype. We received amazing support from the Tech to Protect organizers during the months leading up to the national competition. Being entirely new to the EMS industry, we were grateful for the guidance and wisdom as we built up both our product and our network in the industry. At the national competition we received both an “Award of Excellence” and a seed grant to continue product development.

Screenshots of the Peak Response software over the course of a year.

Working with the Community

When I joined Francis, we talked about our position in the first responder community. As a designer and developer, we were distinctly outsiders. We agreed that the market was saturated with products that may have started with user needs in mind, but had become convoluted with form fields and were far too complex to be used during the chaos of MCIs. The tools used during MCIs were still clip boards, white boards, and paper triage tags. Why hadn’t software been built to improve these life-or-death coordination issues?

Wary of designing a misguided product, we knew we needed to commit to working with the people who would ultimately be using our software. We’ve found the EMS community to be incredibly welcoming and helpful. We met some really incredible industry experts through Tech to Protect and have been slowly building up relationships with first responders across the country. Over the course of the summer, we talked with over 25 users and experts to hear about their experiences responding to MCIs and get their feedback on our nascent product.

We also recently had the opportunity to attend an MCI training with the San Francisco Fire Department. Seeing our first MCI drill unfold, we were overwhelmed by the chaos of the incident and impressed by the organization of the command structure. But we also saw the struggle to maintain organization: radio traffic was misunderstood, charts were constantly becoming outdated as more patients were triaged, and stress levels were running high. This reinforced that there was indeed an opportunity to further organize the chaos and allow first responders to focus their energy on patients.

Britt & Francis outside the SFFD training facility on Treasure Island, excited to observe our first MCI drill.

Where We Are & Where We’re Headed

In November we submitted our final pitch to Tech to Protect and received a second round of seed funding to help us continue developing and testing our software. We recently finished developing our MVP (minimum viable product) and we’re currently planning a partnership with a local fire department to do larger scale testing of our software early next year.

With software used in life-or-death situations, there is no room for errors or inefficiencies. We know there is a long road ahead as we continue to test, learn, and improve. We’re excited to be on this mission to calm the chaos of MCIs!