In support of its long-standing commitment to public safety, AT&T hosted a Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness Mobile App Hackathon on June 20 – 21 at the AT&T Foundry in Plano. The event, which was organized and led by AT&T’s Developer Program, challenged participants to create mobile solutions to benefit the first-responder community. Developers were presented with four challenges around public safety: team communications, situational awareness, location tracking and augmented reality.  

Members from the first-responder community were onsite to mentor participants, including from the Department of Homeland Security.

During the 24-hour competition, more than 60 participants formed teams and worked through the night to create 12 mobile applications that offered real solutions to challenges faced by first responders.  The top finishers were:

Best Use of AT&T API’s ($500 cash and 3 Netgear Unite mobile hotspots) - Team REDLINE - Effective communication between an EMT and a patient is a matter of life and death. REDLINE helps to solve this problem by allowing patients to effectively communicate information using reference pictures of a body map engine so that the EMT can transfer that knowledge to the next level of medical personnel.    

Best Public Safety App ($500 cash) - Team respondER - The mobile app respondER provides vital patient data from a health care provider to allow first responders to control the situation until medical help arrives.

Best Use of AT&T M2X Apps ($500 cash) - Team Stealth Saver – Using auto-texting with voice command, the Stealth Saver app sends a message, customized by the user, to an emergency contact number, also customized by the user. In addition, there is a motion command where an emergency message can be sent if a certain action occurs (such as clapping hands three times). Also, after an emergency situation is detected, a user's real time location along with user's name will be sent to a server every minute allowing the police and a user's family to track the user's location in real time.

Honorable Mention - Team DriveEye –The DriveEye app uses various sensors and a camera to record the driving habits of a teenage driver and reports it back to the driver's parents.

The next AT&T Public Safety Mobile App Hackathon will be held in Palo Alto, Calif., in August.

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