New Relic, the all-in-one observability platform for every engineer, announced that Trek Medics, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) dedicated to improving global access to emergency response networks, is using New Relic for its observability practice through its Observability for Good program. By adopting the New Relic all-in-one observability platform, Trek Medics has shifted focus from manually investigating issues across its infrastructure and tech stack to developing new features that better serve its users’ critical needs. The organization also optimized the experience for users, many located in areas with poor internet connectivity. Trek Medics has used New Relic to maintain the reliability of its platform while scaling its growth to support 9x the emergency response incidents dispatched per year. 

Trek Medics has developed a first-of-its-kind technology that allows emergency responders to communicate and coordinate alerts and responses using their mobile devices, with or without requiring internet connectivity. While their goal is to reach as many emergency services as possible, they faced logistical and technology challenges as they scaled and expanded to some of the world’s most remote and underserved areas. With New Relic, they can take a holistic and proactive approach to managing incidents, improving uptime and reliability for their customers, and enabling them to innovate their platform.

“Our software simply cannot fail. Emergency response services and dispatchers – often in remote areas with complex logistical needs – rely on our platform to ensure the right responder is sent to the right location at the right time during disasters and global mass casualty incidents like the war in Ukraine,” said Trek Medics Founder and Executive Director Jason Friesen. “This means that any downtime or latency of our platform could have catastrophic repercussions. Adopting an observability practice with New Relic has been critical in ensuring not only the uptime and reliability of our platform but also helping us scale so that we can aid more people in need.”

Trek Medics relies on several capabilities as part of the New Relic all-in-one platform. They use application performance monitoring (APM) to dissect incidents on production servers by looking at web transactions and database queries, helping them identify the fastest fix and optimize performance. Configured alerts across both APM and browser applications provide 24/7 visibility on their production servers and integrations with Slack and other tools. They also use log data alongside APM data to uncover the root cause of technical issues and track data ingest by setting up a dashboard and alerts for data governance. Mobile and browser monitoring enable emergency response services using their platform to manage their systems on browsers while coordinating a broad network of mobile devices. Their use of the infrastructure agent provides recommendations on addressing coverage gaps across services, applications, and log sources, resulting in improved performance throughout the stack. Benefits include: 

• 9x increase in ability to respond to emergencies per year: New Relic allows Trek Medics to achieve a ninefold increase in the number of people it helps annually.
• 6x increase in number of mobile devices supported: This is often correlated with the number of emergency personnel and vehicles using the service at a given time. 
• ~30% increase in number of countries supported: Trek Medics plans to continue to scale to more countries as it optimizes its system reliability and tech stack with New Relic.
• Shifted from reactive to proactive: Invested resources to improve system performance and in turn, improve customer experience.

Check out the Trek Medics case study here. Learn more about the New Relic Observability for Good program. New customers and nonprofits can sign up for free or request a demo.