Closing the Outdoor Health & Safety Gap
GOES Health Team
What is the Outdoor Health & Safety Gap?
Last summer, a lineman in North Carolina collapsed from heat illness while repairing power lines in the wake of hurricane Helene. His weather app indicated clear skies. It didn’t indicate the danger.
This is the Outdoor Health & Safety Gap. 175 million Americans ventured outdoors in 2024 — the highest number ever recorded. Yet search-and-rescue missions have spiked 400% in some regions. Extreme heat now kills more Americans than all other weather disasters combined. And outdoor workers? They’re dying at rates 20 times higher than office workers.
The gap is real, and growing: More people outside. Fewer prepared. Deadlier conditions.
From Personal Safety to Organizational Protection
GOES began with a simple belief: everyone deserves the right to spend time outdoors safely. Our award-winning app already protects thousands of adventurers with real-time risk scoring, preparatory guidance, and offline emergency protocols.
But the calls kept coming. Not just from outdoor adventurers, but from safety directors across industries. Their question was simple: Can you protect our teams like you protect individuals?
Today, our answer is yes.
The Platform: Where Medicine Meets AI-Powered Environmental Intelligence
We’re expanding our offering beyond our consumer app so that whether you are playing or working outside, you can do it safely. Traditional tools fall short: weather apps show temperature, not health risk. Safety protocols activate after incidents, not before. Static guidelines ignore dynamic conditions.
At GOES, we’ve built two core capabilities others can’t emulate:
- We Quantify Nature’s Risks
Our AI-driven algorithms transform raw environmental data — weather, terrain, flora, fauna, air quality, UV index and more — into granular risk scores. A construction worker in Phoenix gets different heat alerts than one in Portland. - We Deliver the “What To Do About It”
Awareness without action is useless. GOES provides medically validated, situation-specific guidance in real time. Not just “drink more water” but precise hydration: not too much or too little. Not just “take breaks” but work/rest cycles adapted to current conditions. And when emergencies strike, step-by-step protocols are available offline, when they’re needed most.
Safety-as-a-Service
This is the moment where GOES moves beyond the individual adventurer. With GOES’ enterprise-grade layer of outdoor health intelligence, we help transform partner organizations into true outdoor health & safety leaders.
For decades, safety has been reactive. First-aid kits, static guidelines, and compliance manuals have created waiting rooms for disaster. GOES is turning safety into infrastructure — dynamic, predictive, and embedded directly into the tools organizations already use.
Our enterprise platform brings this intelligence to life in three powerful solutions:
- CORE API — The Intelligence Layer
Real-time and forecasted risk scoring, AI-driven medical guidance, and environmental alerts delivered directly into your systems. CORE API makes environmental health risks visible, measurable, and preventable. Imagine your EHS dashboard lighting up not after an incident, but hours before, with precise, medically validated interventions already mapped. Learn more about CORE API on our documentation site, or try a live demo of its capabilities in our API-enabled custom GPT. - FIELD — The Frontline Shield
Our proven consumer app, now enterprise-ready. Every worker in the field carries a pocket-sized risk command center: dynamic risk scoring, preparation guidance, and offline emergency protocols tailored to their location and task. FIELD turns every phone into a field medic and every worker into a safety leader. Our consumer app is still available for download if you'd like to try it. - EDGE — The Knowledge Engine
Our wilderness medicine expertise, transformed into custom training and protocols for your workforce. EDGE allows organizations to co-develop safety standards with the world’s leading wilderness physicians, embedding tailored, compliance-ready guidance into training, onboarding, and daily practice. It’s not just information — it’s authority, authored by doctors, and aligned with OSHA, NIOSH, and Wilderness Medical Society guidelines.
Together, CORE, FIELD, and EDGE represent a paradigm shift: safety that is proactive, predictive, and personalized. Individually, each solution transforms a part of the safety equation. Integrated, they create a seamless system that protects lives, reduces liability, and builds resilience. This is not an add-on. It’s the future of workforce safety (as-a-service). Learn more about these offerings on our new enterprise site, or contact us.
Building with Medical Authority
Our platform is only as strong as the science behind it. That’s why we’re proud to announce Dr. Colin Little, MD, FAWM, has joined GOES as Chief Medical Officer. His rare blend of mathematics, technology, AI, and wilderness medicine uniquely positions GOES to lead this new frontier. From predictive analytics at PayPal to his wilderness medicine fellowship at Stanford, Dr. Little has seen firsthand how static guidelines can fail in dynamic environments. At GOES, he’s advancing real-time medical intelligence as adaptive as the environment in which it’s used.
“I joined GOES because its mission is urgent. After years of treating patients both in emergency departments and in remote environments around the world I know the importance of adaptation and flexibility. Static guidelines fail in dynamic environments where you might not have all the information you need until it’s too late. You can’t just hope every situation fits neatly into a particular protocol; you have to adjust and adapt. At GOES, we’re not just digitizing first aid guides. We’re building real-time medical intelligence as dynamic as the person using it and the environment in which it’s deployed. This is evidence-based medicine evolving to face environmental reality.”
— Dr. Colin Little, MD, FAWM, Chief Medical Officer, GOES Health
Where Lives, Liability, Regulation and Recreation Intersect
Utilities lose $180,000 per heat-illness claim. Construction leads in OSHA heat citations. Agriculture loses 20 farmworkers to heat daily during peak season. These are preventable tragedies. And with OSHA’s proposed heat standard, voluntary guidelines are becoming mandatory, with steep penalties for non-compliance.
GOES is poised to directly improve safety metrics like TLI, TRIR, DART, Heat Illness Incident Rate, and First Aid to Recordable ratios, giving organizations a proactive compliance and prevention advantage. In addition, the EXPLORE Act is elevating outdoor recreation as a national priority, and safe access has never been more critical. From trailheads to transmission lines, GOES provides the same protective intelligence. More time working or playing outdoors shouldn't mean more risk.
The Choice Is Binary
The Outdoor Health & Safety Gap will claim more lives this year than last. More next year than this. Organizations face a simple decision: Accept the gap or close it. React to incidents or prevent them. GOES was built to close the gap. Not with better band-aids, but with intelligence that prevents injuries before they happen.
Ready to become an Outdoor Health & Safety Leader?
Learn more about this evolution on our new enterprise website or contact us today to explore how GOES can support your mission to close the outdoor health & safety gap. The gap won't close itself.
