During the worst earthquake to hit Nepal since 1934, Jennifer Farrell '04 was in the country to train volunteer first responders.
Farrell had recently launched a mobile app in Bangladesh with the help of a Fulbright scholarship she was awarded as a medical student at Tulane University. Called CriticaLink, the app helps first responders reach disaster victims in countries without emergency services. Farrell wanted to research whether the app could work in Nepal and other parts of the developing world.
Read MoreBut the doctor and entrepreneur said that she felt almost helpless in the midst of the destruction left by the earthquake--more than 8,000 people dead and more than 19,000 injured. In the days that passed before global aid could reach Nepal, Farrell worked with U.S. special forces to assess health conditions in makeshift camps throughout the country and to locate survivors.
"We were trying to rescue people out of the rubble," Farrell said. "We kept thinking there were people alive. Somebody would say they would hear something. But we didn't pull anyone out alive, unfortunately."
The challenge, Farrell said, was knowing where help was needed the most -- and that's where CriticaLink could help in the future.
Farrell describes the app as "Uber for emergencies," calling to mind the car-for-hire mobile app that uses location-based technology to connect drivers and riders. In the case of CriticaLink, the same technology is applied by connecting first responders and victims via a phone call or text message. The app has been successful in Bangladesh, where there are 160 road fatalities for every two in the United States. CriticaLink won Bangladesh's 2015 National Mobile App Award in the Health and Environment category.
What Farrell found most promising in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake is that mobile technology in the country remained fairly intact -- and could be harnessed in the future to locate survivors more quickly.
"After the earthquake, in the middle of nowhere, I was able to get text messages off to my parents," Farrell said. "I had Skype. We had some mobile technology when we didn't have electricity or water and the aftershocks were still going."
Farrell said before global aid could reach the country, the Nepal government had the mobile infrastructure running.
"Everybody has a mobile phone. If you have a way to connect them through an app, through a system, it's possible during a disaster," she said.
In Bangladesh, Farrell regularly holds one-day trainings in triage, CPR and basic emergency medicine for volunteer first responders. To date, Farrell has trained more than 3,000 CriticaLink volunteers. Bangladesh doesn't have an emergency medical system. Heavy traffic on roads serving Bangladesh's 20 million people means that 85 percent of people die before they make it to a hospital, she said.
As a Duke undergraduate, Farrell volunteered as part of the Duke EMS team, a student team of Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), who respond to medical emergencies on campus. She later implemented a first aid curriculum in schools in South Africa as both a Fulbright scholar and as a participant in the university's Service Opportunities in Leadership program, known as SOL, which combines academic study and community-based research.
That she developed CriticaLink with the help of the Fulbright Program once again reminds her of her Duke experience, Farrell said.
Farrell said she hopes to continue testing CriticalLink and preparing it for use in any country without an emergency response system. The time feels right in Bangladesh, she said, because of a corps of thousands of young adults who are "very focused on volunteerism and giving back."
Building on the momentum of that partnership with Bangladesh's youth is what will make CriticaLink a successful technology when diaster strikes in the future, she said.
"We have to connect the people," Farrell said. "It's not enough to just train them. There is no 911. There is no infrastructure. So we will have to build it."