Los Angeles County in California has become the latest county to implement a mobile app to crowdsource lifesaving CPR, as reported in a recent story in the LA Times. The app, called PulsePoint, is made and distributed by automated external defibrillator (AED) company Physio-Control.
"PulsePoint allows citizens that are trained in CPR to receive an alert at the same time as our dispatch center for firefighters, paramedics, or lifeguards are responding to a call," LA Fire Chief Daryl Osby said at a launch event for the app. "Every second, every minute counts. Our average response time for our personnel is five minutes. The first three minutes are very critical. It takes an average of just 10 minutes to learn CPR and just two minutes to download the app onto your phone."
The app is meant to be downloaded by people who have already been trained in compression-only CPR in classes at the local Red Cross or community center. Using location tracking, people with the app can be alerted when someone is suffering from cardiac arrest in a public place nearby, so that they can respond in advance of the firefighters' or paramedics' arrival. The app can also tell them the location of the nearest publicly available AED if compression CPR isn't working.
According to the LA County Fire Department, 13,000 people have already downloaded the app -- out of a population of 4 million residents. They say that currently only about half of cardiac arrest sufferers get effective, immediate CPR, which can greatly increase their risk of survival.
Los Angeles is not the first site in California to deploy the iOS and Android app with the cooperation of the local government. San Jose became the first city to implement it in 2012 -- it's the home city of Richard Price, the former firefighter who founded the PulsePoint foundation. Just last month, San Diego launched the app, and before that local governments in Arkansas and South Carolina implemented the technology as well.
PulsePoint highlights one of the biggest potentials of mobile health -- that it leverages the ubiquity of the smartphone to bring healthcare out of the hospital and into the community. Although the app is free to download for citizens, emergency departments do pay an annual fee to Physio-Control for the service, ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 depending on the size of the population served.
"We are taking a huge leap forward by engaging our citizens to be partners with us when it comes to first response and providing care to your neighbor, your friend, and your coworker," Osby said. "As we look for new ways to improve technology, PulsePoint has really allowed us to enable that effect in a way that we can provide better service."
