PulsePoint Respond is a real-time view into dispatch, increasing community awareness of emergent events, alerting citizens to cardiac arrest victims nearby.
On Feb. 20, a collaborative group of local fire departments, businesses, nonprofits, and hospitals (The “Tri-County Cardiac Arrest Collaborative”) announced the adoption of PulsePoint in Douglas, Sarpy and Washington Counties. The event was held at Thompson Alumni Center at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and was highlighted by messages from the American Heart Association (heart.org), Bennington Fire & Rescue, Omaha Fire & Rescue, CPR survivors and more.
The speakers detailed the benefits of PulsePoint, a free-to-download mobile app, which:
- alerts citizens of cardiac events in their vicinity so they may administer aid
- helps build a comprehensive Automated External Defibrillator (AED) registry
PulsePoint Respond empowers everyday citizens to provide lifesaving assistance to victims of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). PulsePoint Respond app subscribers who have indicated they are willing to assist in case of an emergency can be notified if someone nearby is having a SCA and may require CPR. If the cardiac emergency is in a public place, the location-aware application will alert users in the vicinity of the need for CPR simultaneously with the dispatch of advanced medical care. The application also directs these potential rescuers to the exact location of the closest AED.
The companion app, PulsePoint AED, lets citizens report and update AED locations so that emergency responders, including nearby citizens, can find an AED close to them when a cardiac emergency occurs.
You can help build the community registry by using PulsePoint AED to describe the location of an AED and add a picture. This information is then shared with local authorities to verify. After that, the AED location data can be made available to dispatchers and anyone using the PulsePoint Respond app.
“With PulsePoint we hope to increase bystander involvement in time sensitive medical calls by increasing the use of CPR and AEDs,” said Dave Keber with the Omaha Fire Department. “It gives our residents and visitors the ability to know when a cardiac arrest is occurring close by, locate AEDs in the area, and perform potentially lifesaving CPR while our personnel respond to the scene.”
Throughout the year, fire departments throughout Douglas, Sarpy, and Washington counties respond to 300 to 400 cardiac arrest incidents. A victim’s chance of survival of cardiac arrests drops 10% for each minute that passes without CPR.
Assistant Chief Chad Nixon, NRP, EMS-I with Bennington Fire/Rescue said, “Improving situational awareness with PulsePoint can help build safer, stronger and more resilient communities.” American Heart Association guidelines, published in Circulation, state that such community programs could increase bystander CPR to the roughly 350,000 cardiac arrests that happen outside the hospital each year.
For more information, please visit heart.org.