The dispatch systems of Israel’s three rescue services are now linked, allowing any of the agencies—Israel Police, Israel Fire and Rescue Services, and Magen David Adom (MDA)—to automatically dispatch each other in emergencies rather than manually contacting them, as was previously required.
The interconnect, created by the in-house programming unit at MDA, Israel’s emergency medical service, will accelerate the flow of information between all three rescue services, potentially saving time and lives in emergencies requiring several agencies’ responses.
Israelis currently dial different emergency phone numbers for police, ambulances and fire departments (100, 101, and 102, respectively). The benefit of that approach is that callers do not have to first speak with a 911 operator, as they do in the U.S., which can be a time-consuming process that can delay a response by minutes.
While callers in Israel only need to dial one number in an emergency, it was the responsibility of the police, fire service or MDA to dial or radio the other agencies if the emergency demanded their assistance.
This new three-way connection eliminates the need for that call, allowing MDA’s artificial intelligence and the system MDA established for the Fire and Rescue Services to automatically summon the required resources—even those from other agencies.