BlueLight Apple Watch App Lets You Contact 911 From Your Wrist

Safety toolkit provider, BlueLight today has launched a new Apple Watch app that allows you to make 911 emergency calls within seconds right from your wrist.

According to BlueLight, more than 70 percent of 911 calls come from mobile phones, but unfortunately only 10 percent of those calls are able to locate the callers location. Because this results in a high probability of routing the call to the wrong dispatcher, it is estimated that roughly 10,000 lives per year are lost because response times get delayed by several minutes.

To address the problem, BlueLight uses an IP-based system to pinpoint the location of the call. The call is then routed to the correct dispatcher which results in much faster response times, which of course helps increase the likelihood of that persons life being saved.

I spoke with BlueLight’s CEO, Preet Anand at the Glance Developers conference last week, where he gave me a demo of the app. The idea of being able to contact 911 from your wrist is extremely compelling, especially for those of us who would rather not wear a necklace around our neck for emergency response.

What’s also interesting is the possibilities of collecting other data through the Watch, such as heart rate and body temperature, something BlueLight hopes to do in future iterations of the Watch and App.

BlueLight is $19.99 for 12 months ($4.99 for those with an .edu email address) and offers a 30 day free trial for those interested in trying it out.