It’s still early days for wearable technology, but there’s already a lot of buzz about its promise in field service to improve productivity and cut costs to the tune of $1 billion by 2017, according to a Gartner prediction. But what if those costs are measured in human, not monetary, value?

Patrick Jordan, a North Carolina firefighter who moonlights as a developer, created a Glass application that brings the latest mobile technology to the front lines of one of the most dangerous jobs in the field: fighting fires.

Fire departments already rely on mobile tools such as iPads to do their jobs safely, quickly and more effectively. Jordan hopes to take those benefits a step further by sending all of the information firefighters need, from directions to the nearest fire hydrant to the floor plans of a burning building, directly to their Glass headsets, reports GigaOm.

Granted, Google Glass isn’t yet publicly available and, at $1,500, it won’t be cheap. But Jordan’s app is an interesting look at how, with a little ingenuity, wearable technology could make one particularly dangerous field service job easier, safer and more productive. And in this case, that means potentially saving more lives.

h/t: GigaOm