Phone app connects CPR-certified locals to nearby cardiac arrests
Officials in Clark County, Indiana, are urging locals to download a new phone app that would alert CPR-certified individuals to cardiac arrests happening nearby. An accompanying app also maps out the county’s nearest AEDs, or automated external defibrillators.
“This allows the lay-rescuer or the common citizen to help us out,” Brandon Skaggs, chief of the Clarksville Fire Department, told WDRB this week. He said the county is in the “beginning stages” of the project, but it hasn’t caught on yet. The apps, collectively called PulsePoint, will rely on citizens of Clark County to get CPR certified and help log AEDs in the area.
John Vernia, a local patient, said he’s advocating for the app because, had a CPR-certified volunteer fireman not been present and the director of the YMCA not known where a nearby AED was, he might not have survived his cardiac arrest.
“I was at the right place with the right people,” he told WDRB. “It’s a life-changing event, because you look at life differently.”
The AED map has already been released, WDRB reported. The app that will connect CPR-certified residents to nearby cardiac emergencies is slated to launch late this year or early in 2019.
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After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.