A young cyclist had an accident on a bike trail in Obervaz, Switzerland. After losing and regaining consciousness, he called his wife. But as he couldn’t remember what had happened or where he was, his wife suggested he should use the Rega app to send his location to the rescue service. Rega’s head of operations immediately dispatched the Rega crew from the Untervaz base. They were able to quickly locate the man, provide medical care and fly him to the nearest hospital.

Around the same time, another alarm was received via the Rega app at the operations center. Since the alarm was received several times and the location indicated a location in the mountains, but no telephone call could be made with the injured party, Rega’s head of operations sent the woman a message on her cell phone - without an answer. Although the head of operations knew nothing more concrete about the accident, thanks to the Rega app alarm, he knew the co-ordinates of the accident and was able to send the Rega crew to the Locarno base. From there, they were able to find the seriously injured hiker, treat her injuries, and transport her to the nearest suitable hospital.

The Rega app sends the patient’s exact co-ordinates to Rega once they alarm the rescue service. Upon receiving an alert through the Rega app, not only the location of the alerting party appears on the operational management screen, but also important additional information such as the battery level of the cell phone and the personal details of the alerting party. In order to identify the position of a smartphone owner, Rega can also send the alerting person an SMS with a link, whereupon a website reads out the co-ordinates of the smartphone and transmits it to the Rega Operations Centre. A prerequisite for this procedure is a smartphone with GPS receiver, a switched-on location function and network coverage.