Our Story
Our story is one about nation changing work of driving disruptive innovation– a story that has been written at Harvard and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, a story that has been documented by Films Division of India and brought to television by Shri Amitabh Bachchan in Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), a story of pioneering Highway Trauma Care, Road Safety, EMS (Emergency Medical Services) and shifting the paradigm of Occupational Health to Industrial EMS, from being the first in South Asia to demonstrate the success of the idea of a uniform single emergency helpline to making EMS a fundamental right for its citizens.
Our story is both, a legendary trail of social acts of courage and evidence based medical science because simply put Life Matters to Us.
Medicare Consultancies, the first of our companies was established in 1999 by Ms Sushmita Das to provide out-of-hospital emergency care consultancy services to the manufacturing and health industry in Gujarat and Rajasthan.
Later the same year, Ms Sushmita Das and her husband, Dr Subroto Das (a Padma Shri Awardee) met with a life threatening accident on India’s busiest highway, NH8. They along with co-passengers, fought death, while stranded for 4 ½ dark hours on a rainy night.
It is there where ‘Our Story’ began!
Lifeline Foundation and its internationally feted Highway EMS – Highway Rescue Project (HRP) was born out of that physically unbearable and mentally distressful experience, the Founding Trustees had to undergo.
Without losing hope, they fought for their own lives and that of their co-passengers. At around dawn, they finally managed to get some help.
Time spent during recovery was used to debate and deliberate with colleagues what Ms Sushmita Das wanted: “We were lucky to be alive, let’s ensure others don’t die on the highways.”
With this focus, they worked with friends, doctors (notably Dr Minoo Patel, Dr Vijay Shah & Dr Vijay Thakore) and management experts, brainstorming on various ideas to ensure that accident victims reached the safety of a hospital.