AppDate: Aura brings fast medical response to South Africans

Aura medical response

If you’ve ever called an ambulance for a loved one, you’ll know all too well how excruciating it is to wait for help to arrive. Minutes feel like hours. With South Africa’s bad response times, the wait can be detrimental to the person in need of assistance, as every second counts in medical emergencies.

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes, after just five minutes without oxygen, brain cells start to die, and every minute thereafter 10% more die, with complete brain death occurring within 14 minutes. Stroke victims lose the use of two million brain cells every two minutes, and arterial bleeds can result in death in minutes.

“The current response timeline is falling far short of delivering a vital service that all South Africans deserve,” says Warren Myers, CEO of Aura, South Africa’s on-demand security and medical response platform.

Aura is one of South Africa’s largest networks of emergency and security services with over 2,500 responders. It puts users in touch with the closest team through any device connected to the Internet.

It integrate scalable technology into existing customer portals, using API integration, WhatsApp, customised apps, or IoT devices. It has partnered, among other, with Uber.

“By simply tapping the shield icon on the map in the Uber app, AURA connects a user to the nearest private armed or medical responder in the same way that Uber pairs riders with drivers,” says Myers.

And it can save lives.

The Gauteng Department of Health reports that the current average response time for an ambulance in Gauteng ranges from 30 to 60 minutes, well short of the international standard of seven minutes for life-threatening calls.

Good medical results don’t just depend on how fast a patient is attended to, but also on the quality of care received. Doctors refer to the period of time immediately after a traumatic injury as ‘the golden hour’, when prompt medical and surgical treatment is most likely to prevent death.

“A person’s chances of survival are greatest if they receive high quality care within a short period of time after a severe injury,” says Bernadette Breton from Alliance International Medical Services (AIMS).

Platform: Android and iOS

Stockists: For more information on Aura, click here.

Expect to pay: Prices vary depending on the package chosen.

YouTube’s data saving features

YouTube has announced new data saving features that give users control over how they use their mobile data.

The three new features include:

Data reminder – A feature that allows viewers to set a reminder when they use a specific amount of mobile data, which they can define in the settings.
Data saving settings – A one-stop shop for users to control data related features. The data-saving button enables users to save data across the app with one tap. These settings allow one to adjust video and download quality, resulting in videos that load faster and use less data.
Video preview and quality picker – An opt-in feature for highly data-constrained people that allows them to see a preview of a video and to select the quality that suits them before playback.

The features are already live on Android devices and they can be accessed by clicking on the account icon and selecting “settings”.

Platform: Android

Stockists: Download YouTube from Google Play.

Expect to pay: A free download

MTN partners with Dooka to connect buyers and sellers

The MTN Group has partnered with Dooka, an African business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, to connect buyers and sellers across Africa.

Dooka will boost MTN’s local supplier development initiatives, giving local suppliers the opportunity to sell to other customers on the platform, while providing MTN and different companies with transparency in pricing.

The partnership is revenue-sharing and requires no capex commitment or licence costs.

For more information, visit MTN here.

TikTok now the most downloaded app

TikTok is now the most downloaded app on the planet, with a further 656-million more downloads since the start of 2022. This means the application has a global reach of over 3.5-billion users.

The data has been released by Canadian Sportsbooks, a company that analyses international trending data. It finds that TikTok beat Instagram to become the most downloaded social media app for 2022.

Instagram, which was previously the most downloaded, has been pushed to second place with around 545-million downloads for 2022.

Facebook is sitting at number three, with over 416-million downloads.

WhatsApp has been downloaded over 395-million times, with over 100-billion WhatsApp messages sent every day.

For more information, visit Canadian Sportsbooks here

Mouse Miles

The best way to describe Mouse Miles is an app for most geeks. As the name suggests, Mouse Miles keeps track of how much one uses a mouse.

One can measure in centimetres, inches, feet, kilometres, meters, miles and yards. Mouse Miles also tracks the number of left and right mouse clicks, and even the number of keyboard strokes.

It isn’t really an app for everyone, especially considering the additional strain it puts on a computer’s resources. But it is interesting and somewhat fun to see the distance racked up by your mouse over a full day’s work.

Platform: Windows and macOS

Stockists: Visit the Mouse Miles website here for downloading instructions

Expect to pay: A free download