Product Updates

October 15, 2026

Ask Rescue: Your AI Interface

Most platform features require you to know where to look. A settings menu here, a report builder there, a workflow editor somewhere else. Ask Rescue removes that entirely.

Ask Rescue is a chat interface built directly into Rescue Intelligence. You type what you need, and it handles it.

What you can do with Ask Rescue

Pull a custom report. Ask for a chart showing alert activity over the last 90 days and it builds it on the spot. Save it as a reusable insight so you don’t have to ask again.
Query your system. Want to know which devices have been offline most frequently? Which staff triggered the most alerts last quarter? Just ask.
Change settings. Update a category color, adjust notification preferences, configure who gets alerted during a specific emergency type. All of it through conversation.
Build workflows. This is the newest capability. Describe what you want to happen during an emergency in plain language and Ask Rescue creates the workflow for you. No technical background required. If you can explain it, it can build it.

Why it matters

The goal of Rescue Intelligence is to make safety infrastructure easier to manage and more useful over time. Ask Rescue is the interface that makes that accessible to everyone on your team, not just the people who know where every setting lives.

Ask Rescue is available now inside Rescue Intelligence. Contact us to get started.

September 25, 2026

How to Choose a Reliable Aquatic Panic Button

When it comes to emergency communication for aquatic facilities, the bar is low. There is essentially one alternative on the market, and it relies on BLE only, which means frequent false alarms and a single activation method. That’s not good enough for an environment where a missed or ignored alert can cost a life.

The Rescue Raft wearable aquatic panic button was built differently.

Three ways to trigger an alert

Most aquatic panic buttons give lifeguards one option. The Raft gives them three:

A manual button press
Automatic LoRa alert triggered by water submersion
Patented fall detection

That redundancy matters. In a real emergency, a lifeguard may not have the time or ability to press a button. The Rescue Raft wearable aquatic panic button is designed to trigger automatically when it needs to.

False alarms are now an extreme rarity

Early fall detection technology in this space was notoriously trigger-happy. Quick movements, a run to the bathroom, a sudden shift in position: all of these could set it off. We’ve spent significant time improving our fall detection algorithm, and the results speak for themselves. False alerts from fall detection are now an extreme rarity, even in the situations that used to cause them most.

That matters because a system that cries wolf stops being taken seriously. Reliability isn’t just about triggering when something is wrong. It’s about not triggering when nothing is.

All the platform improvements, included

The Rescue Raft wearable aquatic panic button isn’t a standalone device. It runs on the same Punch Rescue platform as everything else, which means every software improvement we’ve shipped this year carries over automatically.

That includes:

AI after-action reports that pull together everything that happened during an incident into a clean, exportable summary
Ask Rescue, our AI chat interface where a director of aquatic safety can pull any custom report, ask questions about their system, or get answers without digging through dashboards

Inventory update

We recently ran out of inventory and have restocked. More units are arriving within the next 60 days. If you’ve been waiting or evaluating, now is a good time to reach out.

Contact us to learn more

August 28, 2026

Rescue Intelligence Is Live

Rescue Intelligence is now available in beta, and it meaningfully changes what you can do with an emergency management platform.

We saw an opportunity to bridge the gap between siloed hardware and systems by crating the integration layer that connects your entire safety ecosystem.

Most safety systems tell you something happened; Rescue Intelligence helps you understand, respond, and get ahead of it, by connecting your emergency infrastructure to the tools and data sources your organization already uses.

A central platform

Rescue Intelligence is built around a single idea: your safety systems should work together. Instead of isolated alerts and siloed data, Rescue Intelligence acts as a central orchestration layer, pulling in information from across your organization and putting it to work.

Live integrations include:

Verkada
Avigilon
Zoom
GoTo
Slack

Our Genetec integration is coming soon.

Managed AI or Bring Your Own

Rescue Intelligence runs on a managed AI environment built and maintained by Punch Rescue. For enterprise customers who already have their own Anthropic license, you can bring your own API key and run Rescue Intelligence on your own tokens instead.

Apple Watch App, Now Live

Staff can now receive alerts and stay connected during an emergency directly from their Apple Watch. Android smartwatch support is coming soon.

Other AI-Powered Features

Two AI-powered tools are live inside the platform today:

AI after-action reports that automatically surface what happened and what could be improved
AI mapping that helps administrators determine optimal device placement

Try it Free for One Month

Rescue Intelligence is a paid service, and we’re offering one month free for new accounts during beta, software only.

Contact us to get started

August 14, 2026

Punch Rescue’s Card Platform is now FCC certified.

Radio frequencies are heavily regulated in the US, everything from air traffic control to police dispatch is governed by who can use which frequencies and how. Our Rescue Panic Button Card Platform operates on LoRa, WiFi and BLE technology, which means they fall under that same regulation.

FCC certification is a federal review process confirming a product meets the legal and technical requirements to be sold commercially in the US, including standards for radio emissions. To get certified, we made a series of updates to the product to prove it’s safe, stable, and reliable, and that it doesn’t interfere with other regulated systems.

With certification complete, Punch Rescue’s Card Platform is now approved for commercial sale at scale in the US.

August 3, 2026

Firmware Visibility Across Every Device

We’ve been quietly shipping improvements to the admin experience. Here’s what’s new:

Your dashboard now shows the firmware status of every device at a glance. Up to date or update pending, you can see the state of every card and repeater, along with the date and time of its last update. No more guessing which devices are current.

When a new firmware version is ready, an update banner appears. From there, you can push the latest firmware to your Cards and Repeaters over the air, no collecting devices, no cables.

Keeping devices current matters beyond just maintenance. Some of our newest dashboard and map capabilities only work on the latest firmware, so staying up to date means your team gets every improvement the moment it ships.

Multi-factor authentication for admin accounts

Admins can now enable multi-factor authentication on their accounts, adding a second verification step at login. It’s a straightforward way to make sure your organization’s emergency setup stays in the right hands.

SSO for Enterprise customers

Enterprise customers can now sign in using Single Sign-On, making access management simpler and more secure at scale.

These updates are part of an ongoing effort to make the platform easier to operate and harder to compromise. More improvements are on the way.

July 7, 2026

How Punch Rescue Connects to 911

When someone presses their Rescue Card, here’s how Punch Rescue gets the right information to 911, fast.

Our primary integration: RapidSOS

Our core 911 integration is built on RapidSOS, a network connected to every 911 center in the US, over 6,000 centers, directly into their dispatch systems.

When an alert is triggered, we send the emergency category, the location, who reported it, and the name of the organization, all in real time. As the situation develops and the location changes, we update that too.

There’s also a human in the loop. A monitoring center agent is aware of the emergency and calls the 911 center directly to confirm and communicate the details. This matters because 911 centers still default to phone calls, and a silent alert alone isn’t always enough to guarantee a response.

Real-time maps for first responders

Along with the alert, we send a link to our real-time map. A first responder on the way, or a dispatcher at the center, can pull it up on any device and see all staff locations in real time, find the person who reported the emergency, filter by responders, staff, or visitors, and locate assets like AEDs and fire extinguishers. The map is read-only and expires at the end of the emergency.

For K-12 customers

Dispatch is immediate; there is no confirmation step and no delay. A long press or triple press tied to an active threat sends an active assailant or silent panic alert straight through to the 911 center, and the monitoring center agent calls simultaneously.

For non-K-12 customers

For healthcare, corporate, industrial, and other settings, there’s a validation step before dispatch. It works like this:

A 30-second countdown goes to the web and mobile app. Confirm or cancel.
If no response, an SMS goes to a designated number. Another 30 seconds to reply.
If no response, an automated phone call goes to that same number.
If still no response, a live monitoring center agent calls to confirm.
If they can’t reach anyone after all of that, they dispatch.

It’s a thorough process that protects against accidental alerts while ensuring help gets through when it’s needed.

Additional 911 integrations

RapidSOS is our primary and most comprehensive integration, but we also support customers using STOPit Notify and SaferWatch, both of which connect to a broad network of 911 centers and emergency agencies.

Our approach to 911 is probably the most comprehensive in our space, and the real-time map access for first responders is something we haven’t seen anyone else provide.

Panic buttons with reliable emergency infrastructure.

How We Started

In 2017, a young lifeguard at a YMCA of Charlotte branch suffered a seizure while opening the pool alone. She fell into the water and drowned before anyone knew she needed help.

We heard the full story later that year at a conference in Seattle. Our emergency communication platform, PunchAlert, was already deployed at that YMCA, but it couldn’t help. She couldn’t unlock a phone, open an app, or call for assistance.

That tragedy exposed the fundamental constraint: when people need help most, they often can’t use the tools we’ve given them. We spent two days in Seattle with aquatics directors and risk managers, determined to solve what software alone couldn’t. The answer wasn’t another app, it was infrastructure designed for the worst-case scenarios.

Punch Rescue was born from that commitment: wearable devices that work when nothing else can, connected to infrastructure that doesn’t rely on the person in crisis to operate it. From aquatics to K-12 schools and beyond, we’ve remained focused on one principle: protecting the people who matter most, especially when they can’t protect themselves.