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Own business as the graduation exam

Life Button is a social project of SKOLKOVO MBA Alumni, overlapping between mobile medicine and...

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Life Button saves lifes

Life Button is a social project of SKOLKOVO MBA Alumni, overlapping between mobile medicine and telecommunications. The idea for it came to the SKOLKOVO MBA students during the corporate module in the US. The first of its kind in Russia, Life Button is an emergency medical callout system for elderly and disabled people, who are given devices with an alarm button. In case of an emergency, such as a fall, a signal can be sent to the help centre, which can then act accordingly, by alerting relatives or neighbours or calling an ambulance. The help centre keeps medical information about all service users, ensuring that any assistance provided is as effective as possible.

In the case of a fall, 80% of old people are unable to reach the telephone and call an ambulance. When someone breaks his or her hip, a common accident among the elderly, simply placing the injured person into another position could help to avoid many adverse developments. Statistics from the US show that that an investment of just US$1 can save US$7 on admission to hospital. Implementing the Life Button project will be an important achievement in social policy. In Moscow, for example, an ambulance takes an average of 17 minutes to arrive, while the life of an elderly person can be saved in two to four minutes. In Russia there is more than 18 mln of elderly people aged over 65+. All of them fall at least once per year. Life Button helps to prevent serious injury and call for help in case there is nobody around. Thanks to this device people can know what is happenning to their relatives even when they are far away from them.

In January 2011, a “business angel” invested in the Life Button project, and already by July of that year, the first sales had begun. The project was the winner of the Russian national entrepreneurial contest “Innovative Technologies Business 2011” and the TelecomIDEA contest, while it also featured in the Forbes “Top 10 Best Start-ups 2011” list.

Now you can find Life Button solutions together with so-called "babushkophone" (Grandma's phone) at the shelves of the well-known mobile retail chain MTS.

This is how a business became the best graduation exam for SKOLKOVO MBA graduates. High five to them!

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