Partnership provides safety and location services for people living with intellectual, developmental and mental health challenges

MCLEAN, Va., June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Vitals™ App, the revolutionary service changing the way people with intellectual, developmental and mental health challenges receive emergency services, has joined the rapidly growing NextNav partner ecosystem to ensure application users can be precisely located in multi-story environments. Vitals™ offers an invaluable resource to first responders: a way to receive critical information about an individual’s specific needs and conditions in real-time – enabling safer interactions and positive outcomes.

Twenty percent of the population lives with a mental health related challenge, behavior or cognitive triggers which can, under the wrong circumstances, surface negatively and have the adverse effect on an emergency response. With the Vitals™ App, individuals, families and caregivers can share their information as well as request assistance from responders in a means they understand, providing critical details which will ensure a calm, humanized response process.

“We founded Vitals™ with a single purpose in mind – providing a voice and independence to the millions of people needing advocacy, transparency and most importantly a safer outcome when they face an emergency situation,” said Janeé Harteau, President and CEO of Vitals™ Aware Services. “While we have a serious mental health epidemic in our nation, that does not mean that millions of people are not able to function in society; rather, Vitals™ is empowering these individuals and families with the tools they need to maintain and, in times, gain independence, a voice, dignity and quite simply, the basic right to be a productive member of society. One critical factor in this is making sure everyone has a tool to reach our nation’s first responders on terms they understand, with information all responders need. By powering our Vitals™ App with NextNav’s precision vertical location service, these individuals will have a means for responders to serve them on terms they relate to, as something as simple as taking a wrong turn in a building can make the difference between a good outcome and a tragic one.”

“In today’s public safety environment, we see not only growing challenges, but opportunities related to provisioning z-axis vertical location services as a means to truly transform the way citizens are served,” said Dan Hight, VP of Business Development and Partnerships at NextNav. “While 988 is coming nationally, people still require 911 for during a crisis; these needs must be served by experts in their respective domain, and with Vitals™, public safety and its stakeholders gain a capability to not only serve the needs of all citizens, but to learn important de-escalation techniques and lower the potential risk of response for all involved. NextNav is so pleased to be able to join the Vitals™ team in its mission as well as ours - ensuring that all citizens can be located quickly and safely in an emergency.”

“The Vitals™ platform can truly change the way millions of citizens live, providing them a means to be located with critical information pertinent to today’s era of diversified response specialists. We are very excited to help bridge the information gap between an at-risk individual’s needs and first responders,” continued Hight.

Source: NN-FIN

About Vitals™:
Vitals™ started in 2017 to meet a pressing need that we couldn’t ignore: Communities needed a simple way to protect the most vulnerable children and adults, in the moments when seconds count and minutes matter. 

The Vitals™ founders knew from personal experiences the essential role of clear, calm communication between vulnerable people and first responders in a moment of crisis. And they knew that simple, powerful and lasting solutions must come through a dual focus on technology and partnerships. Founded in partnership with the Autism Society of Minnesota, Vitals™ launched in August 2017 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Today, we help people, families, first responders and communities across the U.S. — and we are only getting started.

Our earliest work began by connecting with non-profits, families, caregivers and first responders. We heard parents and caregivers share the burden of worry, when clear communication is so uncertain between first responders and the person in their care. And we heard emergency responders express the stressful challenge they face without access to information in urgent moments of crisis or escalation. 

This growing understanding led us to create a technology solution that bridges the information gap between first responders and vulnerable people in times of crisis. And we invite you to join us in the connection, care and community peace of mind that is the Vitals™ App.

To learn more, visit https://www.thevitalsapp.com/ or follow us on LinkedIn.

About NextNav:
NextNav Inc. (Nasdaq: NN) is a leader in next generation GPS, enabling a whole new ecosystem of applications and services that rely upon vertical location and resilient geolocation technology. The company’s Pinnacle network delivers highly accurate vertical positioning to transform location services, reflecting the 3D world around us and supporting innovative, new capabilities. NextNav’s TerraPoiNT network delivers accurate, reliable, and resilient 3D positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services to support critical infrastructure and other GPS-reliant systems in the absence or failure of GPS.

For more information, please visit https://nextnav.com/ or follow NextNav on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Contact
Mahmood Abu-Rubieh
LaunchSquad for NextNav
nextnav@launchsquad.com