PulsePoint App looks to help people having a cardiac event
CARMEL, Ind. (WISH) — The PulsePoint App connects people with CPR training to those suffering cardiac emergencies.
The app is integrated with 911 dispatch centers that have signed up to use the app. When 911 calls come in for cardiac emergencies, a notification goes out to anyone with the app in a quarter-mile radius so they can start CPR as emergency services respond.
“They call and they need CPR and it will alert you because as well placed as our fire stations are and as quick as we can respond we’re not going to be able to respond as quickly as someone that’s right there in that restaurant, right there in that building,” explained Timothy Griffin, a Carmel Fire Department PIO. “So if they can start CPR before we get there statistically we know how much greater of a chance they are giving that patient.”
This app also helps locate an available AED by using the pulse point AED registry; anyone can add an AED to grow the list.
“Say you’re out, you take an AED, you take a contextual picture of it, ‘It’s next to a men’s room at a gym,’ it will populate that information into the registry, and then once that information’s known it goes into PulsePoint respond for those AED locations for a cardiac emergency,” said Shannon Smith, the Vice President of Communications for the PulsePoint Foundation.
The app is not intended to replace EMS but instead provide necessary care as they arrive.
“If someone is alerted this isn’t going to stop us from coming,” Griffin said. “All it does is start those life-saving efforts which would be CPR, possibly getting an AED on someone or alerting someone if one is nearby.”
“Survival rates are less than 10% in the United States, surviving a cardiac arrest outside the hospital and if we don’t initiate bystander engagement and if we don’t really engage our community in the solution we’re not going to see those numbers rise,” Smith said.
Central Indiana has some PulsePoint-connected communities; they are Bloomington, Boone County, Carmel, Cicero, Fishers, Hancock County, Madison County, Noblesville, Sheridan and Westfield.
The app is free to use for individuals and local EMS pay a fee to be members.