Episode 192: Frontlines of Innovation: Bridging Crisis Management and Healthcare with Ari Rosen

Episode notes

How can technology save lives?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

Thanks for joining our 16 part FRST Challenge Mini Series recorded at the competition! Tracking and situational awareness has long been a problem for first responders. That's why the FRST Challenge competition is designed to pinpoint 3D tracking technologies that provide one-meter accuracy for first responders in indoor environments, crucial for enhancing their safety during rescue operations.

The 6 finalist teams competed in localization and ruggedization tests at Muscatatuck Urban Training Center from October 23-27, 2023. Winning teams gain access to funding, business support, and live field testing opportunities to evolve their solutions for real-world application.

In this episode:

Ari’s journey from paramedic to innovator at the Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab

Understand how CTIL is accelerating the adoption of life-saving technologies in healthcare and crisis management

Discover the impact of interdisciplinary collaboration in solving societal challenges through tech innovation

Find out from Ari Rosen - Research Associate at Indiana University's Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab (CTIL) .

Ari has been working on AI, advanced radio technology, and prototyping projects for CTIL. His diverse background includes healthcare and public safety roles, such as Paramedic and Risk Management professional, along with humanitarian work and teaching.

So click play now to hear what he has to share, and stay tuned for the rest of our mini series!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro
2. 1:12 Meet Ari Rosen
3. 1:50 Ari's role in the challenge
4. 3:34 Pinch-me moments
5. 4:55 What the tracking tech showed
6. 6:47 Honest feedback from first responders
7. 8:03 Teams leaving egos at the door
8. 8:58 One plus one equals three
9. 9:54 Making the data work
10. 11:17 The lab's role in the competition
11. 13:24 Ari's radio and AI project
12. 16:36 Credit to the people behind it
13. 18:08 What stood out this week
14. 19:33 Final thoughts
15. 20:42 Wrap up
16. 21:11 Outro

Questions answered in this episode

What is the FRST Challenge and what does it aim to do?

The FRST Challenge is a competition to produce marketable prototypes that demonstrate indoor localization tracking of first responders within one meter accuracy without any pre-deployed infrastructure. It is administered by the Indiana University Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab and funded by the NIST Public Safety Communication Research Division.

Hear it at 0:00

What is Ari Rosen's background and role in the FRST Challenge?

Ari Rosen is a researcher for the Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab and a former paramedic from Bloomington, Indiana. He is currently in engineering school and brings both an end user perspective and a technology development viewpoint to the challenge, helping bridge first responder needs with technology solutions.

Hear it at 2:16

What technology project is Ari Rosen working on with radio traffic?

Ari Rosen is working with Dr. David Wild on a project using software defined radios to capture public safety traffic on 800 megahertz frequencies. They use AI to transcribe the traffic and are developing real-time tools for incident command and RIT teams, as well as analyzing historical data to improve call dispatch decisions.

Hear it at 13:41

Why are first responders so direct in their feedback on technology?

Ari Rosen explains that first responders are unabashed in their feedback because the tools they use can mean the difference between life and death. Unlike normal product development, if a first responder tool fails, it could kill someone or cause serious harm, so there is no room for error.

Hear it at 6:59

What impressed Ari Rosen most about the FRST Challenge?

Ari Rosen says there was no single eureka moment, but rather a series of moments watching competitors from different countries and cultures collaborate and work toward the same goal of creating technology that can save lives, even while competing against each other.

Hear it at 18:38

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 192 transcript

Frontlines of Innovation: Bridging Crisis Management and Healthcare with Ari Rosen

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Ari Rosen

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new Smart Firefighting mini-series created during the phase five of the FRST Challenge, hosted at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center. The FRST Challenge focus is to produce marketable prototypes that demonstrate indoor localization tracking of first responders within one meter accuracy without any pre-deployed infrastructure. Many of you heard stories from phase four, and here in phase five, the challenges were increased by including multiple responders, longer durations, and longer distances. In these conversations, you will hear from many of the entrepreneurs, first responders, and team members involved that address these challenges and opportunities of X, Y, and Z axis tracking from multiple perspectives around scalability, usability, affordability, and more. This challenge is administered by the Indiana University Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab and funded by the NIST Public Safety Communication Research PSCR Division. Also, consider putting the NIST 5x5 Conference on your calendar, located in Chicago, June 25th to 27th, 2024. Enjoy this deep dive into first responder tracking technology, and please reach out with your thoughts. Here at HQ, alongside Ari Rosen, a man working on a couple of different projects with the Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab and Evolve It First and building stuff. Ari, what's going on?

[1:23] Ari Rosen: Oh man, having a wonderful weekend out here at Muscatatuck. It's been beautiful weather. I'm having an amazing time getting to meet a lot of great people and check out a lot of amazing technology. It's been wonderful.

[1:34] Kevin Sofen: It really has been quite warm. For some reason, I thought in October, I was like, oh, I don't know, it's going to be cold. I'm eating like a snow jack or something. Yeah. Like literally you could be outside in shirts and shorts.

[1:43] Ari Rosen: It's been perfect weather and it's been an amazing environment for actually testing this tech and getting to see it used. It's been incredibly exciting.

[1:50] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. You've been intricately involved and kind of from, I guess, from the beginning till now, and this journey that Sunny talked about today from when Indiana got the grant from NIST and has been administering it to this phase five and confirmed the awards are gonna be given out tomorrow. What's been your role and even some of your just high-level oversights from start to almost finish within the FRST Challenge?

[2:16] Ari Rosen: Yeah, so my role is I'm a researcher for the Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab. I'm a former paramedic, I was a paramedic in Bloomington, Indiana and I'm coming at this kind of from an interesting perspective of having been an end user who's now on the technology side. I'm currently in engineering school and so I've kind of gotten both sides and I think that's been really cool for me to be kind of watch this grant process, watch the initial development, the prototyping, to phase four where I actually got to see the technology in person to now actually getting to see it Pressure tested by end users, getting to hear the first responder feedback, and as a former first responder, getting to actually talk about this process and kind of work through that has been incredibly exciting. Again, coming from the first responder experience, getting to actually see this technology, watching all the teams collaborate, having other competitors from other former NIST challenges come in, integrate their technology with the current competitors, and being able to create stuff that actually can save lives. I've always loved technology, but technology that can keep my former coworkers and my brothers and sisters in arms safe and protect our communities, I think is so powerful and so important. I'm just, to me, this is such an exciting experience.

[3:34] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, it's sort of what some of those pinch me moments of like looking around the room and we were talking earlier whether in two people in particular that I've learned a lot from, Captain Kirk McKenzie and Stefan Truthin, They're just like these incredible go-getters. They're visionaries, but also practitioners doing it in the ground and the field. And just those two gentlemen in particular, what were some of your interactions and experience being around their auras?

[3:58] Ari Rosen: Just both of them are, it's really cool to be around not only people that are excited, but also highly competent, inspiring, inspired, but also collaborative, willing, not just, I feel like talking to both of them, I don't just feel this kind of like, you know, cause as people in command positions, it's very easy to be, to have a large ego or to feel like they know something more than you do. But the amount of creative collaboration, willingness to explore, willingness to ideate and create ideas and to work through problems has been just so inspiring. Just talking to both of them has really been inspiring. Stefan is just such a warm soul and someone who just tackling these massive problems, it feels like they can be solved. I mean, it's like the stuff that can be very disheartening or it's such a massive task to talk to someone like him. I feel very inspired and like, wow, we actually can solve these problems.

[4:55] Kevin Sofen: It's very cool. I agree. I mean, I think some of it is easy to get caught in some of the, maybe the more negative rhetoric that I think when you were around some of the movers and the shakers, but also some of the people that have God's gift of their brain and their ability, but also just this drive and this willingness and this track record that these problems can be solved. And I think kind of shifting it to this FRST Challenge, and even now spotlighting phase four and phase five, what did you see and what was your perspective on the tracking tech specifically in terms of how it worked, evolutions from phase four to phase five, and sort of just your thoughts as the first responder of what this tech was actually doing?

[5:37] Ari Rosen: So I wasn't really privy to a lot of the underlying tech from the companies, because I know a lot of them are kind of keeping that somewhat close to the vest. But watching these teams work through these problems in real time, being able to prototype and iterate and solve these issues was incredibly cool, especially being part of phase four and now being part of phase five, being able to see this process was incredible. And it was also really interesting to see kind of the interface between the first responders and the technology and how, you know, I'm in engineering school, so I see a lot of people who are wanting to create a better widget, but can it be used in a real environment by real people in chaos and in danger? And can you rely on it? Can you actually bet your life on this tool? I think that is such an important thing. And to watch these teams come in and actually listen to the feedback, take it to heart, and really improve their products to the point where there is a clear vision where you can actually see this being used by end users is a really cool thing to see. And first responders are pretty unabashed in their feedback. They are quite honest folk and do not hold back. So it's been really cool to see that kind of interaction.

[6:47] Kevin Sofen: I overheard some of the post demo and post training experiences, interviews from some of them. And I definitely heard some choice words that were very honest. Yes.

[6:59] Ari Rosen: Well, I think one, it's just a cultural thing that first responders tend to be somewhat crass, but I think it's also when the tools that you're using can mean the difference between life and death of yourself or someone you care about or a bystander or a patient, the, while it's hidden in humor, so much of that is very much rooted in the intensity and severity of our job, that there's no room for error and that the reason we're unabashed and we're so quick to voice opinion is because if you don't, you can kill someone. it really is that important that the, you know, unlike normal product development where, you know, if you fail at say, whatever it is, okay, well, the product didn't work, but in this context, it's like, if you mess up, you could kill someone, you could permanently damage someone, you could, you know, cause millions of dollars worth of damage, whatever that be. And so the severity and the seriousness is there. And I think that's one of the cool things about watching this technology is that it is that important. And to see the teams actually take that to heart has been really cool.

[8:03] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I think a lot of the teams have done a good job of placing their egos at the door and asking those open questions and also having that humility and looking in the mirror and acknowledging that they indeed themselves cannot do it themselves and they have to collaborate.

[8:18] Ari Rosen: Absolutely, collaboration I think is the key and I think that's a word that has come up a lot this weekend and it's been really fun watching the teams, especially once the competition is over, collaborate and sit and talk. I mean, just even in the room we're in right now, getting to watch teams from different countries, different cultures sit, compare data. Earlier, I watched several of the teams actually do a tracking simulation wearing multiple different companies' technology at the same time. And that is incredibly cool to me to watch, you know, competitors collaborating. That, to me, that collaboration is so important because this is not just a profit-driven process. This has real ramification.

[8:56] Kevin Sofen: Well, that makes Sonny Kirkley very happy. I remember asking him in the first, early stages of FRST, he was like the goal is to see some of these teams ultimately collaborate and how the technologies together can have a one plus one equals three effect and move towards something that's going to be a commercial product that will help support first responder operations.

[9:15] Ari Rosen: Absolutely. I mean there's a team yesterday from a previous NIST challenge that was here doing augmented reality work and it was so cool to watch them live port the data from the servers that was being like live tracking from these teams directly into their AR. And so they could hold it up and we could see the teams underneath in this massive thousand meter tunnel deep underground, being able to actually see them in real time move through space was just such a cool experience and to see like multiple teams that had never worked together ever, their tech didn't necessarily work together, being able to integrate that and solve these issues It was just an incredibly cool experience.

[9:54] Kevin Sofen: Well, and that point on the whole data and how the teams had to create the data and then send the data to this. server, then allow it to be able to then come into a format that was easy for the judges to work, is one thing. But then also that data to be able to integrate in the AR, it was fascinating. And I overheard Rhonda explaining this whole data process to Andrea from the XPRIZE, and Rhonda made it seem like it was so easy. It was like, oh, you know, you take this, data goes in here, and it comes in this file, and this, and that, it goes to the cloud, it comes down. And I was like, you made it seem like, I mean, she's a savant wizard.

[10:25] Ari Rosen: She is. And her, Rhonda's number one skill, and this is actually something that's really inspired is the idea of data journalism, being able to tell stories. I mean, it's so easy as a data scientist to get caught in the numbers and to get caught in this quantitative process, everything is about metrics, everything is about these numbers, when that really, especially in this context, first responder life is not about numbers, it is very much the story being told. What is the qualitative understanding of what's happening? That's one of the things that I love about the Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab, Rhonda Fisher, David Wilde, Professor Wilde, all these folks are so good at extracting a story, which really, you can just start to see the actual, yeah, I just see the story unfold is just such a cool process. And I think that's so important when it comes to stuff like this.

[11:17] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and I mean, to double click into that a little bit more from Rhonda's role and you mentioned Sonny and David and Hayley and you, but on your shirt, you get the Luddy School of Informatics and to look at the data side and the data science and the AI, I mean, from kind of what was the impact and role of even like the Indiana students that were there and Rhonda, like what role does the Indiana Luddy School of Informatics and the brainpower and all the capabilities, what was their kind of role within this whole competition?

[11:48] Ari Rosen: Well, as you know, the Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab was the primary sponsor of this event. Dr. Wild was the primary investigator, and then Sunny was also one of the co-lead. Being able to work with them and then them bringing in students is really cool because it's not only a good learning experience for us, but this is a lot of people who are at the cutting edge of knowledge. They are the people that are, you know, this information is very fresh. They are learning the newest techniques. They're very much in that process. And there's so much brain power. There's so much knowledge. There's so much expertise, enthusiasm within that school, I'm actually on the engineering side, which I think is a really cool intersection. The intersection between data science and engineering is such a cool thing for me. I mean, as a student myself, it's just incredibly part of this and to be trusted so much with a lot of this was an incredible experience for me.

[12:41] Kevin Sofen: It's really cool to watch.

[12:42] Ari Rosen: It's incredibly cool to watch. And that not only was I trusted with helping with the event, but it's also being able to create my own technology, bring ideas and have, you know, other stakeholders within this process being willing or even open to listening to a student talk about these ideas. I mean, I think that is the other thing is that people being open to listening to each other, even though, you know, someone might have been a fire chief for, you know, decades, been in this for, you know, longer than I've been alive, but that everybody here is so willing to collaborate that it's just been, as a student and as a former first responder, been such a both eye-opening and just very gratifying process.

[13:24] Kevin Sofen: Well said, Ari. And you, in the last statement, you had mentioned some of the tech that you're working on. You developed. And I've enjoyed just seeing and looking at this tech that I want you to expand upon.

[13:35] Ari Rosen: For sure.

[13:36] Kevin Sofen: What is it? Why did you create it? And then sort of, yeah, just expand on that a little bit more.

[13:41] Ari Rosen: Yeah, for sure. So I'm working on a project with Dr. David Wild, who's the head of the CTIL. And basically what we're doing is we're leveraging. So right now in engineering, I'm focusing a lot on radio technology, RF stuff, specifically what are called software defined radios, which is a near real-time programmable radio. And so the technology we're doing right now is we're using STR to capture public safety traffic across generally right now, we're focusing on the 800 megahertz, which is most public safety in Indiana is on the 800 megahertz frequencies. And we're capturing that traffic using various AI technology to transcribe. And then we kind of have two different processes. One is kind of the real time side, which is how do we create either applications, dashboard tools for first responders to, there's a process called a RIT team within fire departments, which their sole job is rescue. Their sole job is to rescue downed firefighters to respond to May Day or a downed person and respond to that. And we're like, how can we leverage that radio traffic to help RIT teams, to help decision makers, to help fire chiefs? So that's one side of it. The other side is the retrospective side. So we're looking at analyzing radio traffic for, say, keywords is one process that we're looking at. It's like, how do you say the welfare check? The welfare check is a catch-all that people use, police, fire EMS, et cetera, use this, the welfare check can be anything. I mean, me personally as a paramedic, I've had welfare checks that were, the person was playing Xbox and couldn't hear the door, so that was the welfare check, or someone we found them deceased, or they were having a mental health crisis. So it can be, it is such a wide topic. And so we're actually looking right now at the idea of how do we look at all of these proxy metrics and all these other data points to be able to kind of flesh out what is a welfare check, who should actually be dispatched. For instance, do we need law enforcement to go on every welfare check? Well, in my experience, no. But from their experience, yes. So how do we appropriately dispatch the right resources to the right call at the right time? Do they need mental health professionals? Do they need an ambulance? Do they need police? What is the right thing? So that's one of the processes we're looking at. Also, we're just in general kind of like exploring what we can find. I mean, I think part of this is, which is really cool. And one of the things I love about our lab is that we are very much willing to explore and kind of chase down leads and kind of go through this process. And that has been such a cool experience for me to be able to prototype and explore. I mean, I feel like I'm a kid. Like I get to play with toys all day and come up with cool ideas. It's amazing.

[16:36] Kevin Sofen: I'm going to clip that. We're going to have that be on the homepage of crisis technology.

[16:41] Ari Rosen: Absolutely.

[16:42] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I mean, I really give credit to David, Sonny, Rhonda, and you as far as just creating this energy and this aura that's focused on spurring curiosity in terms of looking at these moonshots out of problems with tech, with funding, with the right program, with the right incentives, with some really fricking smart people and well-connected people. Absolutely. To the Stefan and Kirk problem earlier, it's like, we can solve these problems. We can use tech to be a piece of the puzzle to help save lives, to help reduce risk, to help protect property, to do things to just continue to make society safer.

[17:14] Ari Rosen: Absolutely, and I think it's such an important thing that if we're not collaborating, I think we're failing our communities. That while a lot of these things can seem like buzzwords or seem like silly, you know, seem like, oh, it's just, you know, waste of time, I actually think the opposite. I think that the collaboration and these conversations and the willingness to fail and explore is how you solve these problems. It's the only way we will. Because if teams aren't talking, if groups aren't talking, they aren't sharing, they aren't collaborating, they aren't being creative, we're just gonna be in the same old rut every single time and the same problems are gonna come up. I think that is just something I've seen repetitively. People get really fixated on the tools that saved them 20 years ago. Well, that data may have changed, but they will not let that tool go. And so that is something that I'm really trying to pull out and really promoting. I feel very supported by that, by the folks that I'm around.

[18:06] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, man, we ain't got time for that.

[18:07] Ari Rosen: Yeah, I know.

[18:08] Kevin Sofen: I'm also, I mean, kind of bringing it back to FRST for any closing parts here. I mean, the past three days have been pretty intense, but overall it seems like the, I mean, the planning and the execution and everything just went well and judges got the data and it seems like they've made a decision they're gonna talk about tomorrow. Which is impressive. Was there anything from this phase five that sort of surprised you or maybe kind of made you maybe you stand there and pause or anything that excited you or anything in particular that catches your attention?

[18:38] Ari Rosen: I wouldn't say there was anything that particularly was like a singular Eureka or a pause moment per se. It was more the experience of being able to talk to all of these people and have these conversations with folks. And I go back to collaboration, really create these collaborative environments and to realize that we all are working towards the same goals, Even though these are competitive teams was just such a cool experience for me to see this come through and to realize all these people are really working towards this amazing goal was such an just to me, that was that was the there was no one Eureka moment. It was just a series of moments.

[19:17] Kevin Sofen: To me, it's that table right over your left shoulder. You got you a scent and adaptive trace all just chopping it up at the table. up at the table.

[19:25] Ari Rosen: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and folks from different countries, different cultures, different, you know, styles, different backgrounds. Yeah, it's wonderful. It's such a cool experience.

[19:33] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. And that was that was a good kind of could have been the closing top. But of course, my I've got to finish with any sort of mic drop of sorts with any sort of like, I would love to hear sort of question, comment, quote, challenge, insight, any sort of final parting thoughts that you can leave with us here today. You just said collaboration, which frankly is a great one.

[19:56] Ari Rosen: Honestly, yeah. I think that the collaboration, I think that. really, I actually, there's one that was funny today. The folks from bad VR said something that I loved, which is, this is the worst this technology will be like, this is, you know, kind of like that. A lot of this technology is very nascent iPhone one territory. You know, it's very early. He's like, this is the worst this experience will be. Just to know that like, which technology that already is blowing my mind and it was just totally impressive to know that this is, this is like the prototype this isn't even the real deal just incredible that is so cool to me just to have a front row seat in the cutting-edge technology that's that we're experiencing is just such a privilege

[20:42] Kevin Sofen: writing that one down to man that's a good one all right it's been such a joy getting to know you since face forward to same big chatting up through Instagram a little bit I've seen anything at phase five and yeah I'm just excited to further collaborate and everything you're working on is super important and critical and just want to help spotlight the work and be a catalyst and help support everything you're working on.

[21:01] Ari Rosen: Cheers, I really appreciate the collaboration as well. It's been great getting to know you and yeah, hope to work with you more in the future.

[21:06] Kevin Sofen: Right on, man, until next time.

[21:07] Ari Rosen: Cheers.

[21:11] Kevin Sofen: Thanks for listening to today's episode. What did you think? What'd you learn? Hopefully something, right? Please reach out on social media with your thoughts on this episode and any other suggestions for future content. We look forward to capturing more important stories across public safety and are here at your service. Thank you for watching!