∞ Siri and 911

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John S. Wilson, a health policy analyst, talking about how Siri could revolutionize our 911 system.

Once the word “emergency” is spoken to Siri, a range of beneficial activity could commence. First, the phone could video call 911 utilizing Skype or a similar VoIP video service. This would allow first responders to have a much better context of the emergency at hand. Armed with a live video and audio feed of the event, visual cues could assist the first responders as they deconstruct the problem. Second, Siri could send the GPS location of the caller.

I’m not sure how far off in the future something like this would be or how practical it would be. What if you spoke “emergency” by mistake? Interesting thoughts though.



  • October

    I think it’s an awesome idea… Does 911 have video calling capabilities? All they would have to do as a safety precaution is have Siri confirm if it is an actual emergency, if no then she resumes query, if yes, either ask to place the call or request a button is pressed, seems easy to me…

  • Anonymous

    It’s a nice idea, but 911 responders have a very limited amount of time to get very specific details of the emergency. They are less concerned about seeing/hearing what’s going on, and more interested in quickly and accurately recording vital information such as an address, and guiding the emergency services to the location.  Often they need to pacify the caller, and keep him/her on track and on topic so as to only provide the information the operator needs to fulfil their report for the emergency services. 

    In a catastrophe however, for instance a building collapse where many people are trapped, video would be extremely beneficial to rescue coordinators on the ground. I think in that scenario being able to use something like FaceTime/Skype could save an enormous amount of time, and lives – but 911 operators aren’t rescue coordinators, so they would need to patch the video feed through to the rescue teams somehow.