Electronic Press Kit: Decisions For Heroes

Electronic Press Kit

Press Releases

Monday, 26th July 2010 - IRISH EMERGENCY RESPONSE VENTURE PROVIDES OPTIMISED RESCUE DATA FOR €500 MILLION BID.
Thursday, 14th January 2010 - IRISH DECISIONS FOR HAITI HEROES
Thursday, 3rd December 2009 - DECISIONS FOR NORTH EAST WALES SEARCH AND RESCUE HEROES
Monday, 27th July 2009 - WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE EMERGENCY SERVICES GET SWINE FLU?
Thursday, 9th July 2009 - HEROIC WEB BUSINESS WINS €10,000 IQ PRIZE
Monday, 18th May 2009 - YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR MAKES DECISIONS FOR HEROES

Press Clippings

Shephard Group / Rotorhub - Optimized rescue data provided for €500m rescue helicopter bid
Tuesday, 27th July 2010
IrishDev.com - D4H Helps CHC Win Key SAR Contract
Monday, 26th July 2010
Irish Examiner - New Technology Is Helping Rescuers To Save Lives
Monday, 19th July 2010
The Guardian - Decisions for Heroes software tracks Cumbrian floods
Friday, 18th June 2010
Emergency Services Ireland - Web-Based Software Saves Lives
Tuesday, 16th February 2010
Technical Rescue Magazine - Better Decisions save more lives
Tuesday, 9th February 2010
Emergency Services Ireland - Training In Suicide Intervention Skills
Tuesday, 26th January 2010
Emergency Services Times - A smarter rescue team just arrived on-scene. Over.
Tuesday, 10th November 2009
The Irish Times - Software for rescue teams wins €10,000 start-up prize
Tuesday, 14th July 2009
Sunday Business Post - ByteSurgery developer wins €10,000 iQ prize
Tuesday, 14th July 2009
EMS Responder - Heroic Web Business Wins IQ Prize
Tuesday, 14th July 2009
Sunday Business Post - Software coming to the rescue in Dublin
Sunday, 24th May 2009
The Irish Times - New software will help emergency services to save lives, says developer
Friday, 22nd May 2009
TechCrunch.com - Decisions For Heroes, the ‘BaseCamp for Mountain Rescue’ launches
Wednesday, 20th May 2009
IrishDev - Irish Software to Save World Lives
Monday, 18th May 2009
Silicon Republic - Robin Blandford is a busy man
Thursday, 29th January 2009
O'Reilly Radar - DisasterTech: "Decisions for Heroes"
Saturday, 1st November 2008
Northside People - Young rescue worker makes 'Decisions for Heroes'
Thursday, 2nd October 2008
ElectricNews.Net - ENN Daily Digest
Monday, 22nd September 2008
The Guardian - Decisions for Heroes: close, but no cigar
Monday, 22nd September 2008
The Irish Times - Take a Byte of tech blogging
Friday, 14th March 2008

Factsheet

Decisions For Heroes is a web application that saves lives, it does this by helping rescue teams record and analyze their rescue operations and training.
Decisions For Heroes was trialled for 8 months with 1,800 rescuers in 5 countries.
The system has a 'baked-in' feedback system, that allows users leave improvement suggestions against each page.
There is no software to download. Users access the tool as a web application through their internet browser.
Typical users include Mountain Rescue, Coast Guard, Search & Rescue Dogs, Sheriff Depts., Lifeboats, and Urban Search & Rescue teams.
Users sign-in after each incident or training exercise to type in their activity report. Decisions For Heroes automatically adds their data to their teams records, and updates their stats.
Rescue teams pay a monthly subscription to gain access to the service.
The initial Decisions For Heroes service was built by founder Robin Blandford in 2008.
Company founder Robin Blandford saw the global use of this service having developed a prototype version of the software for his own rescue team. The resulting data was so good, that he decided there was a business in it.
Having initially worked abroad, Robin Blandford now lives and works from Ireland, Europe.

Sample interview questions

If you would like to interview company founder Robin Blandford for print, audio, or video production here are some sample questions you could ask.

On the business of rescue...

Rescue has a lot of disciplines, how did you find out what worked?
How can Decisions For Heroes help a team optimize their rescue work?
What systems are you replacing and who are your competitors?
What makes a web application a suitable platform for this service?
Can you give an example of how you improve team communications?
How can rescue teams get started?

On founding a business...

This is really niche! What made you think of combining technology and rescue?
What did you experience as one of 20 finalists in the European Seedcamp competition?
Why is it so important to have an elevator pitch?
Explain to me why 'fail cheap and fail fast' so important?
What was your background before this company?

Biographical details

Robin Blandford, Company Director.

In May 2008 at age 24, company founder Robin Blandford left an accelerated management career programme with Thomson Reuters, to launch his own company ByteSurgery Ltd. Robin achieved the remarkable, and used his experiences as a volunteer cliff rescue climber with the Irish Coast Guard, to build and launch a debut product 'Decisions For Heroes'.

Having left full-time employment, Robin set off travelling for a summer in the United States with his laptop. A prototype product soon came together, and every day for 3 months, Robin would check his inbox for feature requests, build them while Europe slept, and release a new version the next day. The product, which came from this release-early, release-often process was structured into a company on return to Ireland, and is now used by rescue teams around the world.

Before working with Thomson Reuters, Robin was awarded a B.Eng. (Hons) in Digital Media Engineering from Dublin City University (2001-2006). He was identified early in his graduate recruitment cycle as 'one to watch' and has since worked professionally in digital media in London, Dublin, and Singapore. Robin is a proven innovator with strong technical ability and team leadership.