Innovative ambulance software to speed up emergency care in Rwanda

New ambulance technology, developed in Rwanda with support from NIHR’s Research on Interventions for Global Health Transformation (RIGHT) programme, is speeding up emergency care for patients.

Rwanda Build Program (RWBuild) worked with local and international partners to develop the 912Rwanda software. The technology helps ambulance crews and hospitals to treat emergency patients faster, by automatically recommending the nearest available facility that can provide the care the patient needs.

While high-income countries have developed sophisticated ambulance systems to reduce the delay in getting patients to appropriate healthcare facilities, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) often lack the financial and training resources to implement similar solutions.

Up to 250 million people suffer injuries each year in LMICs. In Rwanda, injury causes 9% of deaths, with 47% of these occurring before the patient reaches hospital. The software could help to improve outcomes for these patients, as well as helping to reduce deaths and disability from other emergency medical conditions, like post-partum hemorrhage, sepsis, malaria, heart attacks, and strokes.

The project has received more than £3 million from NIHR’s RIGHT programme, as well as nearly $1 million from the United States National Institutes of Health.

The initial phase of the 912Rwanda software is already operational in Kigali. This helps to prioritise ambulance deployment based on data collected by dispatchers. It has been used since December 2023 for over 20,000 journeys, allowing ambulance teams to locate patients quickly in areas where smartphone penetration and triangulation via cell phone masts is not possible.

The second phase, launched in August 2025, introduces triage software which incorporates a Destination Decision Support Algorithm. This enables ambulance crews to capture simple patient information that is used to recommend the nearest suitable healthcare facility to treat each patient. This is especially critical for patients with life-threatening conditions, who must reach treatment within one hour of symptom onset.

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Source: NIHR, 7 August 2025