Jersey City Medical Center-Barnabas Health is being recognized for its role in launching the nation's first community-based emergency response program.

JCMC will receive the EMS 10: Innovators in EMS Award for its collaboration with United Rescue, the mobile-app based volunteer pre-ambulance emergency medical care service, which went live in November.

The JCMC, along with United Rescue, is to be honored for their life-saving contributions to the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) community. The eighth annual EMS 10 Awards Ceremony will be held during the 2016 EMS Today Conference & Exposition on Wednesday at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore Inner Harbor.

The Journal of Emergency Medical Services (JEMS), with support from Physio-Control, Inc., is recognizing JCMC and United Rescue as the top innovators who have driven the EMS practice to a higher level in 2015.

This award comes just months after United Rescue and JCMC launched the nation's first community-based emergency medical response program in partnership with Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop.

United Rescue volunteers, as known as Community Based Emergency Caregivers (CBECs), have been certified and equipped through a partnership with JCMC to respond to 911 medical calls.

As part of the program, each volunteer completes 60 hours of medical training and is then linked to a dispatch system using a GPS-based mobile app called NowForce. When an emergency call is received, a central dispatch system locates the nearest and most appropriately equipped volunteers to a given emergency and dispatches them using a GPS-enabled mobile application. Volunteers arrive within three minutes of a call to begin lifesaving medical treatment before the arrival of an ambulance.

The first 51 participants of the United Rescue program graduated during in a ceremony at City Hall in November. Since the program launched, CBECs have contributed in variety of ways, including some two dozen volunteers who helped out during last month's blizzard.

"We've had an overwhelming response from the community with nearly 700 residents signing up to be United Rescue volunteers and are honored that the JCMC and Jersey City have been recognized nationally for implementing this innovative technology," Fulop said in a statement.

According to United Rescue, the average ambulance response time for major U.S. cities is 11 minutes. Meanwhile, United Rescue boasts an average ambulance response time of 3 minutes.