The fastest ambulance? A motorcycle

As a young EMT on a Jerusalem ambulance, Eli Beer realized that, stuck in brutal urban traffic, they often arrived too late to help. So he organized a group of volunteer EMTs -- many on foot -- ready to drop everything and dash to save lives in their neighborhood. Today, United Hatzlah uses a smartphone app and a fleet of “ambucycles” to help nearby patients until an ambulance arrives. With an average response time of 3 minutes, last year, they treated 207,000 people in Israel. And the idea is going global.

This is an ambucycle.

This is the fastest way
to reach any medical emergency.

It has everything an ambulance
has except for a bed.

You see the defibrillator.
You see the equipment.

We all saw the tragedy
that happened in Boston.

When I was looking at these pictures,

it brought me back many years to my past

when I was a child.

I grew up in a small
neighborhood in Jerusalem.

When I was six years old,
I was walking back from school

on a Friday afternoon
with my older brother.

We were passing by a bus stop.

We saw a bus blow up in front of our eyes.

The bus was on fire, and many people
were hurt and killed.

I remembered an old man

yelling to us and crying
to help us get him up.

He just needed someone helping him.

We were so scared and we just ran away.

Growing up, I decided I wanted
to become a doctor and save lives.

Maybe that was because of what I saw
when I was a child.

When I was 15, I took an EMT course,

and I went to volunteer on an ambulance.

For two years, I volunteered
on an ambulance in Jerusalem.

I helped many people,

but whenever someone really needed help,

I never got there in time.
We never got there.

The traffic is so bad. The
distance, and everything.

We never got there when
somebody really needed us.

One day, we received a call
about a seven-year-old child

choking from a hot dog.

Traffic was horrific,
and we were coming from

the other side of town
in the north part of Jerusalem.

When we got there, 20 minutes later,

we started CPR on the kid.

A doctor comes in from a block away,

stop us, checks the kid,
and tells us to stop CPR.

That second he declared this child dead.

At that moment, I understood

that this child died for nothing.

If this doctor, who lived
one block away from there,

would have come 20 minutes earlier,

not have to wait
until that siren he heard before

coming from the ambulance,

if he would have heard
about it way before,

he would have saved this child.

He could have run from a block away.

He could have saved this child.

I said to myself, there
must be a better way.

Together with 15 of my friends --

we were all EMTs —

we decided, let's protect
our neighborhood,

so when something like that happens again,

we will be there running to the scene
a lot before the ambulance.

So I went over to the manager
of the ambulance company

and I told him, "Please,
whenever you have a call

coming into our neighborhood,

we have 15 great guys who are willing

to stop everything they're
doing and run and save lives.

Just alert us by beeper.

We'll buy these beepers,
just tell your dispatch

to send us the beeper,
and we will run and save lives."

Well, he was laughing. I was 17 years old.
I was a kid.

And he said to me — I remember
this like yesterday —

he was a great guy, but he said to me,

"Kid, go to school, or go
open a falafel stand.

We're not really interested
in these kinds of new adventures.

We're not interested in your help."
And he threw me out of the room.

"I don't need your help," he said.

I was a very stubborn kid.

As you see now, I'm walking
around like crazy, meshugenah.

(Laughter) (Applause)

So I decided to use the Israeli
very famous technique

you've probably all heard of, chutzpah.
(Laughter)

And the next day, I went
and I bought two police scanners,

and I said, "The hell
with you, if you don't want

to give me information, I'll get
the information myself."

And we did turns, who's going
to listen to the radio scanners.

The next day, while I was listening
to the scanners,

I heard about a call coming
in of a 70-year-old man

hurt by a car only one block away from me

on the main street of my neighborhood.

I ran there by foot. I had
no medical equipment.

When I got there, the 70-year-old man

was lying on the floor, blood
was gushing out of his neck.

He was on Coumadin.

I knew I had to stop his bleeding
or else he would die.

I took off my yarmulke,
because I had no medical equipment,

and with a lot of pressure,
I stopped his bleeding.

He was bleeding from his neck.

When the ambulance arrived
15 minutes later,

I gave them over a patient who was alive.

(Applause)

When I went to visit him two days later,

he gave me a hug and was crying

and thanking me for saving his life.

At that moment, when I realized
this is the first person

I ever saved in my life after two years
volunteering in an ambulance,

I knew this is my life's mission.

So today, 22 years later,
we have United Hatzalah.

(Applause)

"Hatzalah" means "rescue,"
for all of you who don't know Hebrew.

I forgot I'm not in Israel.

So we have thousands of volunteers

who are passionate about saving lives,

and they're spread all around,
so whenever a call comes in,

they just stop everything
and go and run and save a life.

Our average response time today

went down to less
than three minutes in Israel.

(Applause)

I'm talking about heart attacks,

I'm talking about car accidents,

God forbid bomb attacks,
shootings, whatever it is,

even a woman 3 o'clock in the morning

falling in her home and needs
someone to help her.

Three minutes, we'll have
a guy with his pajamas

running to her house
and helping her get up.

The reasons why we're so successful
are because of three things.

Thousands of passionate volunteers

who will leave everything they do

and run to help people
they don't even know.

We're not there to replace ambulances.

We're just there

to get the gap between the ambulance
call until they arrive.

And we save people that otherwise
would not be saved.

The second reason
is because of our technology.

You know, Israelis are good in technology.

Every one of us has on his phone,
no matter what kind of phone,

a GPS technology done by NowForce,

and whenever a call comes in,

the closest five volunteers get the call,

and they actually get there really quick,

and navigated by a traffic navigator
to get there and not waste time.

And this is a great technology
we use all over the country

and reduce the response time.

And the third thing are these ambucycles.

These ambucycles
are an ambulance on two wheels.

We don't transfer people,
but we stabilize them,

and we save their lives.

They never get stuck in traffic.
They could even go on a sidewalk.

They never, literally,
get stuck in traffic.

That's why we get there so fast.

A few years after I started
this organization,

in a Jewish community,

two Muslims from east
Jerusalem called me up.

They ask me to meet. They
wanted to meet with me.

Muhammad Asli and Murad Alyan.

When Muhammad told me his personal story,

how his father, 55 years
old, collapsed at home,

had a cardiac arrest,

and it took over an hour
for an ambulance arrive,

and he saw his father die
in front of his eyes,

he asked me, "Please start
this in east Jerusalem."

I said to myself, I saw so
much tragedy, so much hate,

and it's not about saving Jews.
It's not about saving Muslims.

It's not about saving Christians.
It's about saving people.

So I went ahead, full force --

(Applause) —

and I started United
Hatzalah in east Jerusalem,

and that's why the names United

and Hatzalah match so well.

We started hand in hand
saving Jews and Arabs.

Arabs were saving Jews.
Jews were saving Arabs.

Something special happened.

Arabs and Jews, they don't
always get along together,

but here in this situation,

the communities, literally,

it's an unbelievable
situation that happened,

the diversities, all of a sudden
they had a common interest:

Let's save lives together.

Settlers were saving Arabs
and Arabs were saving settlers.

It's an unbelievable
concept that could work

only when you have such a great cause.

And these are all volunteers.

No one is getting money.

They're all doing it
for the purpose of saving lives.

When my own father
collapsed a few years ago

from a cardiac arrest,
one of the first volunteers

to arrive to save my father

was one of these Muslim
volunteers from east Jerusalem

who was in the first
course to join Hatzalah.

And he saved my father.

Could you imagine
how I felt in that moment?

When I started this organization,
I was 17 years old.

I never imagined that one day
I'd be speaking at TEDMED.

I never even knew what TEDMED was then.

I don't think it existed,
but I never imagined,

I never imagined that it's going
to go all around,

it's going to spread around,

and this last year we started
in Panama and Brazil.

All I need is a partner
who is a little meshugenah like me,

passionate about saving
lives, and willing to do it.

And I'm actually starting
it in India very soon

with a friend who I met
in Harvard just a while back.

Hatzalah actually started
in Brooklyn by a Hasidic Jew

years before us in Williamsburg,

and now it's all over the Jewish
community in New York,

even Australia and Mexico
and many other Jewish communities.

But it could spread everywhere.

It's very easy to adopt.

You even saw these volunteers in New York

saving lives in the World Trade Center.

Last year alone, we treated
in Israel 207,000 people.

Forty-two thousand of them were
life-threatening situations.

And we made a difference.

I guess you could call this
a lifesaving flash mob,

and it works.

When I look all around here,

I see lots of people
who would go an extra mile,

run an extra mile to save other people,

no matter who they are,
no matter what religion,

no matter who, where they come from.

We all want to be heroes.

We just need a good idea, motivation

and lots of chutzpah,

and we could save millions of people

that otherwise would not be saved.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)