 Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering IBM Edge 2050, brought to you by IBM. Okay, welcome back everyone. You are watching Silicon Angles theCUBE. This is our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the soup from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angle and co-host of theCUBE. Our next guest, excited to have here, all dressed in their outfits and their uniforms. Gina Sweatt, division chief, Memphis Fire Department, and Andrew Hart, battalion chief, Memphis Fire Department. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, John. You guys look great. I mean, Dave Vellante would be jealous, seeing you guys with a tie. I don't wear a tie from California, so we don't do the tie. Congratulations on your announcement. So the keynote speech, you guys were highlighted by the mayor. Congratulations. So tell us about the system that you guys are doing with IBM. I'll see you won the grant. And you guys do some innovative work with IBM. What's the genesis of all this? What's the problem that they're solving? Great question. Great question. Well, the Memphis Fire Department runs one of the largest EMS systems in the state of Tennessee. And we have a very high run volume we make over, last year we made over 120,000 EMS calls alone. And what we found out is over 20% of those are actual non-emergencies. So what we would like to do with partnering with IBM is to find a way to bring all that data together and to offer a new way and better services to the citizens by hopefully eliminating some of those non-emergency calls and offering services that the citizens really need. So basically it's a false alarm. From a critical nature standpoint, you're rolling a truck, rolling a crew. There's cost involved, hard costs, so I can imagine that. And there's also the opportunity cost of a real emergency. So, you know, the personnel's out on a call. I mean, this is where we're talking. This is the rubber meets the road, right? And it's not even that it's a false alarm. It's people that do have needs. It's just they don't realize the resources that are out there or they don't have resources. So they know, if I'm sick, I call 911 and I go to the hospital. That's all they know. So we'd like to get it changed to where we can get them to the correct path. If they need a doctor and can go to a clinic then we can take them there. If they need a dentist, go to dentist's office, we can make sure they go there. Or even better, if we can prevent some of these issues and start working on the prevention side and eliminate these calls altogether. With the mayor on earlier and talking about this, you know, Smarter City initiative is a really great thing. And this is the evolution and, you know, cities and towns have been living in the Stone Age, technically. And, you know, budgets are not as tight. Federal government's not revamping stuff. So you start to see this shift on one end, the beginning of this new change. And then there's the fantasy end of like drones delivering packages from Amazon and medicine being dropped in. So there's a kind of a science fiction feel to all this. But the realities are there. So what's your take on that? I mean, do you see that future? Do you guys talk about that? Or are you just trying to get through the days every day? We talk about a lot of those, obviously being firefighters, we're not really engaged as deep technically as obviously some of the IBM people that will be coming to town. But we do envision things changing in the future. Just my over 20 years in the fire service, I've seen tremendous change, even in the technology and the equipment that we wear. So I can only imagine that the next 20 years are going to bring all kinds of changes that we probably can't even imagine. The key is access to the data. I mean, if you have all the data, it could be the pressure of someone's gas, is it a gas leak, is it real or not? Is it what's going on with the first responders, whether it's emergency? So I'd like you to share with us some stories around some of the kinds of calls you guys have been on, some crazy weird calls to calls that were taking you out of your path to ones that actually worked and then where you guys see the improvements coming. Well, I can give a few examples. I mentioned dentist. We have quite a lot of calls for tooth aches, which we transport to the hospital and there's nothing a hospital can do for a tooth ache. They're not dentists. So they'll give them a referral to a dentist. So it's multiple resources being used for essentially nothing. We also have a smaller contingent that we kind of call frequent flyer that have a multitude of issues. And we can get called for, we've had one gentleman that's called because he needs assistance from his wheelchair to his bed. And the next time it's because my remote control is over there. I'd like somebody to grab my remote control for me and give it to me or get me a glass of water or make a phone call for me. And what's the current process? Take us through the sausage factory as the calls come in, the telephone system. The current process right now is if you call 911, then we are going to send an ambulance and possibly even a fire truck. We are sending the resources and we'll take you to the hospital if you'd like to go, no matter what the issue. I've seen some towns imply some sort of tax, if you will, kind of on the spot, which is if it's a false alarm, then they get filled. Have you guys looked at anything like that? Do people respond to that? Or is it all service-court-free? The mayor is really focused on let's provide the correct resources for these people. Let's steer them towards what they really need. We don't want to abandon any of our citizens, we just want to get them to the correct resource. So what's the plan? What are you envisioning? Multiple sets of tiered resources, so toothache to just under mission critical could be a different set of personnel. Is there enough personnel? Is there an Uber for EMS? I mean, there could be. We have discussed that. We have actually just discussed that earlier today. I think what we envision is the right way and more efficient way to serve our citizens and get them the resources they need. And it may be, we've got a couple of projects that we're already looking at. One of them would be handling the way the calls come in and having, even improving on the type of questions that we ask, bringing nurses on board in the dispatch call center to do further evaluation on the calls that are marginal, that may be questionable if they're real emergencies or not, and then there will be, they'll have the resources to evaluate the call further and to direct the person to the proper resource that they need. Share an example where you guys were tied up on with resources and missed something on the side was, you don't have to be specific to name names, but to highlight the severity of what we're talking about here. Can you guys share an example? Having being tied up, could have been fire, could have been an emergency. Sure, we've had several examples where an ambulance or a fire truck will be on a call for somebody that's got a sore throat, a 20-year-old, and just doesn't have a ride to a doctor, doesn't have a doctor, has called us. And within that time that the crew is on scene there, a fire will break out right down the street. So that crew is not available, so now our companies are coming from further away. It's longer response times. And the people- Who pays for all that? The government? The city of Memphis. So you guys take up, this is all subsidized by the mayor. The citizens of Memphis actually pay for our services. Tax payers. The tax payers. So this is good for everybody. More fishing, you say resources. What's the craziest thing you've seen on a call? Quick reality TV now. I think camera crew rolls up and it makes cable. Unfortunately when people call us, they're having probably one of the worst days of their lives and it's just, the citizens allow us in their homes and we get to see, they invite us there to help them. And that's what we're really there for. And our firefighters, I was telling them earlier that most of them are alpha personalities. They want to help people. Firefighters have a calling. They want to help people. And it's frustrating when people abuse the system or when they miss a call that's an actual emergency. And hopefully this will be a win for not only the citizens of Memphis, but also for the firefighters and paramedics in the department. Talk about the demographics and the makeup of the department. How many people? What's it look like? What's the recruiting look like? Is it you're onboarding new people? What's the kind of talent you're bringing out? So you have a certain requirement to be on the team, physical resources. But like, I mean, who are you guys attracting in? Because you're going to need more resources because now you're going to start tearing out some resources to be looking at more diversity in terms of skill set. If you have this nice, beautiful way to triage calls, you can go out and give the guy a ride to the emergency room if he needs it or get an maneuver app or put different resources on. So what kind of, does that change the management philosophy, if you will, of the group, team? These are, so these are additions we're looking at as well. We started about five years ago, I believe we actually train our own paramedics in-house and we're one of the few in the country that actually does that. So that is an added thing that we've been doing the past few years and I think we will continue to provide the training and the skill set that we need, especially when we determine what these new initiatives bring, what is the skill set we need. And I know that the mayor and our fire directors committed to making sure that we have the proper training. Okay, I'll ask differently, what's on the wish list? Give us the top, top things, come in, it's like, okay, we got some resources, what's the top priorities? What's the things you want to see work done? And then what's the three must have, the must have list and then the list of the wishes that your wish could have. We've got a few initiatives we're already working on. What's near and dear to my heart is the whole prevention side. I'd love to see us much more active. On the fire side, fire prevention, we've gone great strides with our smoke detectors installation, with fire codes being changed. So the fire calls have gone down, on the EMS side, the EMS calls are steadily going up higher and higher. And I'd love to see us get a lot more active in working with neighborhoods, working with churches on, you people know your neighbors. Let's check on them, let's find out what's going on. If they might have an issue with falls, let's work on fall prevention. If they might have diabetes, let's help them with their diet. Let's help them make sure they have their meds. They have a ride to get their meds. That's where the data could be really helpful, because if you know someone's on a med cycle and that they haven't been to the pharmacy to pick up or the delivery hasn't been there, that could be interesting, so this is new data. You guys looking at that data now, or is that something you think IBM will bring to the data? That's what we're hoping IBM will help. We've got data and we can pull some limited things from it, but we can't break it down that much. That would make your life easier, wouldn't you think? Right, we have data that's in different areas, and so hopefully with the IBM team, we'll be able to be able to mine that data all together and make it a little easier for us to extrapolate what we need from the data to make the decisions that we need to make. And we're looking at this as a community initiative, so it involves all the area hospitals, it involves doctors' offices, and we'd love to all as a system be able to share this data and help get these patients what they need. Well, it's super exciting. I know IBM, we've been covering IBM for a few years now here at the events and talking with their executives and their engineers, and the predictive analytics and the prescriptive analytics are huge here, because now you can say, okay, you can now make the outcome use case based on your needs, not some database, right? You can actually use this Watson analytics system, so it should be super exciting, and I'm really proud to interview you guys and congratulations for the grant, and I know you guys work hard and serve the people, and again, it's provided by the tax payer, so efficiency is everything, right? And that's the whole part of the cloud, right? Absolutely. So I'll give you guys a final word, just share your vision for the future for you guys, the department and your teams. Well, again, we'd like to say thank you to IBM for this opportunity to partner as Mayor Wharton said earlier, we know Memphis and we know how our fire department works. IBM knows the world. We're really excited about the team coming to town. We've been asking, when are they coming, when are they coming? We're ready to get started. Like I said, we've got some initiatives started now, and I can't, this is a great opportunity, not only for the Memphis Fire Department to be a leader in the world, and we look forward to being able to share what we learn with the IBM team, with other departments. And I look forward to being able to, there are a lot of resources in Memphis area, but it's like we're all operating in silos, we're all taking care of our own little area, and I'd love to be able to pull all these resources together and work as a community, work as a group. And you know what's great is that the data unifies everyone, and that's kind of levels the silos, if you will, but also you bring in the Twitter data, for instance, creates another connection engagement point with the customers, the citizens. So now you have another level of communications, direct messages for help. I got a sore throat, and maybe someone in the community might come over to help. So maybe there's some self-governing kind of going on here. That would be awesome. Congratulations, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, and we appreciate all your work you guys do. It's a great example of IBM's citizenship and the work that they do in the community, bringing their technology to help people. Thanks so much for coming in. Thank you. We'll be right back after this short break. It's all happening in Memphis here in Vegas. Big data news, IBM helping out the city of Memphis. We'll be right back after this short break.