A startup called Call9 has recently launched out of beta with the idea to connect patients in emergency situations to doctors on demand.

In the “regular” nursing home scenario, if a patient exhibits warning signs of a heart attack, a nurse calls 911 and waits with the patient for an ambulance to arrive. The average ambulance wait time is 15 minutes, which can be the difference between life and death.

Call9 is a Y Combinator graduate, and it’s currently working closely with 3 nursing homes, 3 hotels, and 7 schools.With Call9, the situation is different. The nurse, teacher, or concierge can open the Call9 app to immediately connect, via video chat, to an on-call ER doctor. The doctor on its end assesses what’s going on with the patient, and instructs the person on the ground how to perform basic medical procedures and administer medicine. If needed, he or she will also order an ambulance.

As part of the service, Call9 also distributes mobile emergency kits, which include an EKG machine, ultrasound machine, and other equipment necessary to perform bedside laboratory tests. These machines are connected to the cloud, allowing physicians to access their readings from a remote location. Physicians are also able to see patient’s medical history and other potentially useful information.

Call9 is a Y Combinator graduate, and it’s currently working closely with three nursing homes on Long Island, three hotels (including one in the Caribbean) and seven schools across California and New York to validate the concept. Thus far, they managed to gather a group of 130 ER doctors.

The company makes its money from subscriptions fee for the nursing homes, schools and hotels, depending on the medical supplies required and level of employee training. It also charges per patient as well to cover the cost of diagnostic tests and the ambulance, if called.

[Via: TechCrunch]