< + > From Ambulance to ER: How Connected Tech is Revolutionizing Emergency Response

The following is a guest article by Cory Davis, Vice President at Verizon Frontline

The emergency response landscape is rapidly evolving, prompting many public safety agencies to adopt cutting-edge solutions. A recent 2025 Verizon Frontline Public Safety Communications Survey revealed that nearly 80 percent of first responders prioritize a reliable and resilient network for their daily communications. Furthermore, over two-thirds believe that artificial intelligence (AI) is, or will be, a critical priority. Connected vehicles also ranked high, with 20 percent of respondents identifying them as a top priority, second only to 5G connectivity. These technological leaps are enabling real-time transmission of patient data, video, and diagnostics, helping ensure emergency room (ER) teams are ready the moment a patient arrives.

Bringing Critical Care to Hard-to-Reach Patients with Innovative Ambulance Upgrades

With over 23,000 ambulance services in the U.S., and nearly three-quarters (73%) serving rural areas, access to on-board connectivity is vital. In remote locations, transporting a patient to the nearest hospital can take hours. During this extended period, paramedics and EMTs often need to provide advanced care to stabilize patients. This requires the availability of a reliable and robust communications network.

Navigating rural and rugged terrain can also present significant challenges for EMS providers attempting to reach those in urgent need. Natural disasters, for example, can block roads and hinder prompt patient transport to the ER. Today’s ambulances are equipped with a wide array of gear, supplies, and advanced technologies, allowing EMS personnel to stabilize, treat, and transport patients more effectively. These innovations empower paramedics to deliver increasingly sophisticated care on the go.

Smart Solutions Empower Faster Diagnosis and Treatment

AI can help first responders diagnose and treat patients more efficiently. Smart tools can identify patterns in vital signs and other medical data, enabling EMS personnel to arrive at a faster and more accurate diagnosis. The ability to capture more advanced diagnostics also significantly enhances the detail and quality of data shared with the hospital and, ultimately, with the attending physicians. Better in-ambulance care and a more thorough picture of the patient’s treatment and status better inform and prepare the surgeons who eventually treat these patients, which can improve health outcomes.

Augmented reality (AR) can further enhance an EMS provider’s ability to administer treatment. For example, AR glasses can render a virtual overlay of a patient, making it easier to perform some procedures, such as IV placement. Combined with smart solutions, AR can be a powerful assistant, guiding EMTs and paramedics through actions that they otherwise might have difficulty executing.

These smart tools provide an EMT with guidance on physiology and treatment, drawing from the patient’s current health data, while a virtual overlay shares visual cues showing the best way to administer a treatment or perform a procedure for that particular scenario.

Reliable Connectivity that can Handle Large Amounts of Data

These EMS advancements are compelling, but they only work if the proper infrastructure is in place. An ambulance equipped with sophisticated technology must be able to process large amounts of data in real-time, including biometric data and related visual information. EMS personnel must also be able to transmit this data, including imaging, to the hospital for diagnostic purposes and to inform treatment options.

Technology-forward ambulances require high-capacity, high-speed, and low-latency network connectivity. Fast, reliable connectivity, such as an on-board router running private 5G wireless or 5G network slicing that can provide dedicated network resources and the uplink and downlink connectivity EMS providers need, is a must. In an ambulance, interruptions of service aren’t inconveniences; they can be life-threatening.

EMS Innovation is Essential to the Smart Healthcare Ecosystem

A smart healthcare system excels in two key areas: it is proactive and can effectively prioritize. This system can simultaneously promote good health while also prioritizing care according to need and urgency. The former may reduce the latter, but the latter will always remain. A smart system prioritizes its most vulnerable, and there are few more vulnerable than a patient in an ambulance en route to the hospital. To prioritize these patients, we must prioritize the EMS personnel providing them care. Ambulance connectivity is critical and can be unpredictable. EMS personnel need all the reliable and trustworthy support they can get.

About Cory Davis

Cory Davis is the Vice President at Verizon Frontline. His organization has over three decades of experience working side-by-side with first responders and public safety agencies at Verizon. With more than 20 years of advanced wireless industry experience and nearly a decade supporting public safety communications, he and his team are dedicated to ensuring first responders have the network and solutions they need to meet their unique and evolving needs. Cory is responsible for the overall Verizon Frontline public safety strategy, operations, crisis/disaster response, and the customer experience for more than 40K public safety agencies across the nation, helping enable them to accomplish the mission under both routine and extreme conditions.

Cory and the entire Verizon Frontline team remain committed to the first responder community, putting the nation’s #1 network choice in public safety to work every day to ensure the mission-critical communication needs of public safety professionals are met. Cory also sits on the Board of Directors for the National Sheriffs Association IGNITE Program.

Cory received a Bachelor of Science degree in Geographic Information Systems from the University of Wyoming and has led high-performance teams for both the Verizon Consumer and Business groups. Cory currently resides just outside of Phoenix, AZ with his wife and three kids.