Mobile Care and Safety Oy is bringing to market a new kind of safety solution that speeds up getting help in the event of an emergency. Swing FastHelp is software for your mobile phone that makes calls and sends emergency texts and your location to a group of responders that you have defined at the touch of a button.

The nearest help can be the fastest help.

Swing FastHelp is based on your own circle of responders, defined in advance. The responders’ contact details are entered in the software from your phone’s address book. “What’s important is that you can quickly change your circle of responders depending on the situation and your location. The nearest help might be someone in a nearby house or a colleague depending on where you are at the time,” says sales and marketing manager Tuula Kollanen. When you sound the alarm, Swing FastHelp calls your responders one by one in order until one of them answers. At the same time, everyone on your list of responders receives an emergency text.

Your responders can see where you are

Swing FastHelp pinpoints the location of the person needing help and sends it to the responders. Your location is shown directly on the screen using Nokia’s Ovi Maps application. Your location is also sent as coordinates so it can be seen on Google Maps too, for example. This means that responders don’t need a computer to pinpoint the location, it can all be done on their phones.

Giving tourists in Lapland a safer experience of the wilderness

The largest holiday cottage rental and outdoor activity company Destination Lapland Oy is the first tourism company in Finland to offer customers heading out into the Finnish countryside a new kind of assistance in the form of Swing FastHelp. “The location information sent out by Swing FastHelp is crucial and considerably speeds up the arrival of help in an emergency. We want to look after our clients and offer them safer experiences”, says Destination Lapland’s managing director Mauri Kuru.

New service alongside traditional phone response alarms

The home care and home service company Harmonia Oy in Jyväskylä has been offering traditional phone alarms to its clients for years. Managing director Merja Jalkanen thinks that Swing FastHelp opens up an opportunity to help new client groups. Merja says that this kind of solution could become a safety solution for everyone as its ease of use makes it a practical solution for many user groups.

Member of the Finnish Parliament Aila Paloniemi thinks Swing FastHelp is an excellent personal safety solution

Member of Parliament and chair of the Finnish Federation of Foster Care Associations Aila Paloniemi thinks that the solution is an ideal personal safety solution and can recommend it to many user groups. “Swing FastHelp is a great example of how technology can be harnessed to help people at different stages of their lives. This kind of solution could also be extended to preventing school bullying or domestic violence,” says Paloniemi.

Developers from Nokia

The closure of Nokia’s Jyväskylä office was the impetus behind the company Mobile Care and Safety. There were 5 of us who cut our teeth at Nokia and had a wealth of expertise and 90 years of experience in mobile technology between us. It was our shared values that led us to set up the business. We heard one story where en elderly person’s safety alarm was switched over to a local taxi service during the night. We believed that there had to be a better solution that that for getting help quickly, says managing director Pertti Saarinen.

Read more about the project at www.ikateknologia.fi