The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate and Canada’s Department of National Defence’s Defence Research and Development Canada Centre for Security Science have kicked off a new initiative that could change how first responders work.
As part of this initiative, the DHS S&T and DRDC CSS will hold a field experiment in Hastings County in early 2019. They will be testing Assistant for Understanding Data through Reasoning, Extraction and sYnthesis (AUDREY).
When you think of A.I., you might think of Apple’s Siri. Doug Socha is the Chief and Director of Emergency Services with Hastings-Quinte Paramedic Services. He says that while AUDREY is A.I. like Siri, there is a difference between the two.
Socha says that they will be starting from scratch. Right now, he says, AUDREY doesn’t even understand what a Paramedic is. They’re going to be running a large amount of tests to make sure AUDREY is prepared for the field.
Socha says the testing is to help build AUDREY’s database with scenarios that will be faced when it’s in the field.
AUDREY was developed by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in hopes to give tailored situational awareness support and improve decision making.
He says that this A.I. technology could drastically improve the care patients receive.
Socha says that it’s too early to know how much this might cost or how available it will be to Paramedics. He says that this is the start of the next generation of first responder technology. The exact location and date for the testing has yet to be announced.