Too often, patients and families are left with needs that the immediate response cannot fully address. Fire and EMS crews, police officers, mobile integrated health teams, and community support networks all encounter people who need help beyond what can be provided during that visit.
The immediate problem may be handled. The next problem is still waiting.
Someone involved in a car accident may need help finding a tow, transportation, or somewhere to get follow-up care. An older adult may need meals, prescription assistance, or a way to reach an appointment. A family displaced by a fire may need shelter and basic necessities long after the crews have cleared the scene.
A family dealing with a death may need help finding funeral services or knowing where to turn for burial or cremation assistance. They are being asked to make unfamiliar decisions while grieving. Giving them relevant information they can return to later is a practical way to support them beyond the immediate response.
These situations are sometimes treated as edge cases because they fall outside the main task a team was sent to handle. For the person experiencing one, it can be a life-changing event.
SlingSource was designed to help fill that gap.
Think of it as a modern-day leave-behind leaflet. The responder selects resources relevant to the person’s situation and shares them through a QR code. The recipient scans it and opens the information on their own phone, without needing to install an app or create an account.
The purpose is familiar: leave someone with useful information. SlingSource makes that handoff specific to what the person needs, with information they can revisit or share with family.
That matters when someone is overwhelmed. A conversation can cover a lot at a moment when they have very little capacity to take it all in. The name of an organization, a phone number, or a list of next steps may be hard to remember by the time they need it. Having those details on their phone gives them something to work from after the conversation ends.
SlingSource organizes resource information around the situations responders encounter, including medical care, senior support, food and housing assistance, crisis resources, funeral and bereavement needs, and help following a vehicle accident.
Those needs often overlap.
Consider an older adult whose situation involves several problems at once. Medical care might be one part of it. Food, transportation, and access to prescriptions may also affect what happens next. A useful resource list needs to reflect that whole situation.
Or consider someone without stable housing. A shelter listing may be relevant, but so might food, clothing, help replacing identification, or employment services. The person helping them needs a way to bring those options together.
After a death, one family member may be speaking with responders while another is making arrangements. Information that can be shared gives the family a common starting point, without asking the person who received it to remember and repeat every detail.
The same gap appears across different kinds of response. A police officer, an MIH clinician, or someone helping a family through a Red Cross support network may each reach a point where the next useful step is connecting that person with another service.
Finding the information and passing it along should be a manageable part of that work.
A resource directory cannot guarantee an available bed, an appointment, or that someone qualifies for assistance. Its value is in making the next step easier to find and keeping useful information with the person who needs it.
As a firefighter, I care about what happens after we leave. I’m proud of SlingSource because it gives us a practical way to help with that part, too.
The call has an end. The person’s situation may take much longer to work through. We built SlingSource to help them leave that encounter with somewhere to turn.