Someone felled by the heat
cannot say their own name.
The heat takes his voice. His straw hat still knows his name.
Heat stroke takes consciousness first. In a field, on a site, on the training ground or in a festival crowd, the finder holds a phone to the cap or collar and, in one second, heart medication and a family number appear.
For local governments, builders, logistics firms, military, police and fire training units and event organisers whose people keep working outdoors through heat waves, and for families whose parents still work the fields alone.
Before anyone arrives, heat stroke has taken the voice
- Heat stroke follows headache and dizziness with a sudden loss of consciousness. By the time someone arrives, the person cannot say who they are, what they take or whom to call.
- Many of those felled by the heat are older people and workers alone outdoors. The finder may be a passing neighbour, perhaps long after the collapse, and in the middle of a field or a sprawling site there is no address to give.
- Whether someone takes heart or blood-pressure medication is one of the first judgements in treating heat stroke, yet that list lives in their head or in a drawer at home.
- Work clothes and hard hats have no room for an ID, sweat ruins a paper card, and a foreign co-worker's details may be in a language nobody on site can read.
2 p.m., a chilli field
- 06:30
Before the heat builds, Mansu, 78, puts on his straw hat and walks out to the chilli field. Inside the hat is a RadPatch his son Junho wrote from the record he keeps for his father in WaveMed: blood type, heart medication and a diuretic, Junho's number.
- 14:10
It is 35°C and Mansu is working alone. Dizzy, he sits down between the rows, then slumps over. His phone is on the kitchen table at home.
- 14:42
A neighbour on the farm road finds him and holds his own phone, with WaveMed installed, to the patch inside the straw hat: name, blood type, heart medication and a diuretic, son's number. He passes it all to the dispatcher, then finds the addressless field on WaveMed's satellite map and reads out the coordinates.
- 15:10
Paramedics read the same patch with 𝒱WaveMed in one second; it only reads and changes nothing. Knowing about the diuretic, they adjust fluids.
- 16:00
Junho, called by the neighbour on the number from the patch, meets his father at the hospital.
The hat speaks first, on the finder's phone
- Where the heat hits: a 25 × 25 mm RadPatch inside the straw hat or hard hat, on the work-shirt collar, on the training-uniform collar and cap, or on a festival wrist band, attached with an iron, a hair straightener or as a sticker. The silicone body tolerates heat, and with its sealed chip it survives sweat and the washing machine.
- One second, no signal needed: the finder holds a current smartphone to the blue cross, and blood type, allergies, current medication, diabetes emergency information and emergency contacts appear in the reader's language, in any of 27 languages, including for a co-worker from another country. No battery, no internet, no login.
- Read-only for responders: 𝒱WaveMed, made for paramedics, emergency responders and fire crews, can also be installed by training-ground medics and event medical teams. It reads the patch and cannot change it. The patch holds only what the wearer chose, encrypted, and only their four-digit PIN can update it.
- Before the heat, with the free WaveMed app: blood pressure and heart rate as a 30-day trend with notes such as “morning, seated”, a medication schedule with reminders and Completed marks, separate family records for a parent who works the fields alone, and a folder for each year's check-up results.
- Where they fall: satellite view to send the exact spot (GPS holds without a signal, and coordinates and a link still send on a weak connection), nearby medical centres with emergency rooms marked, and the country's ride apps opening with the hospital already filled in, in around 60 countries.
Inside the hard hat, on the work-shirt collar, at the back of a cap: where the heat hits
From the record before the heat to the place they fall: the free WaveMed app
Real WaveMed app screens (demo data).
Where it is read
How to roll it out
- Pick one village, one site or one training unit for the heat season; we provide cap and hard-hat patches and the Desktop Writer.
- The village office or the site safety officer registers residents and workers in list order with WaveMed Desktop and a reader, using the details each person agreed to share, with the village head's, the children's or the safety officer's number (Path B).
- Workers and families with smartphones install the free WaveMed app, write their own patch or a parent's, note the PIN and update it whenever medication changes (Path A).
- Give village heads, safety officers and medics twenty minutes of reader-app training; after the heat season, compile response cases and set the next season's scope.
Frequently asked questions
Is it fine in very hot places?
The silicone body tolerates heat. Inside a car in midsummer, a sauna or a hard hat, the information stays. With no battery, there is nothing to charge.
What if the field or site has no signal?
The patch is read without internet. The finder needs only a current smartphone: most Android phones on 8.0 or newer, or a recent iPhone. With WaveMed or 𝒱WaveMed the screen opens by itself.
My parents don't use a smartphone. Can they still wear one?
Yes. Give them a separate family record in your WaveMed app and write the patch for them, or register them at the village session. The wearer never needs a phone; the finder's phone is enough.
Get the apps
Before the first heat wave, start with one village or one site. Install the free WaveMed app today, and talk to us about cap and hard-hat patches.