PulsePoint Comes to Aumsville
The Aumsville Rural Fire Protection District announced the launching of PulsePoint to further the District’s commitment to creating a healthy and civically engaged community. Chief Hari detailed the benefits of PulsePoint, a free-to-download mobile app, which 1) alerts CPR-trained citizens of cardiac events in their vicinity so they may administer aid, 2) helps build a comprehensive Automated External Defibrillator (AED) registry and 3) informs the community of emergency activity in real time.
PulsePoint Respond empowers everyday citizens to provide life‐saving assistance to victims of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). PulsePoint Respond app subscribers who have indicated they are trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and 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 simultaneous 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 you 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 staged for 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, while also keeping the community informed, in real time, of all emergency activities,” said Chief Hari. “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. It also shows them general information for all 9-1-1 calls to keep them better informed of what’s going on in our community.” Throughout the year, the Aumsville Rural Fire Protection District responds to nearly 750 incidents, including more than 460 emergency medical events.
“In addition to nearby ‘CPR-needed’ notifications, PulsePoint subscribers can follow their local fire department and choose to be notified of significant events that may impact their family. These informational notifications provide an early and automatic heads-up to local threats such as wildland fires, flooding and utility emergencies,“ said Richard Price, President of the California-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit PulsePoint Foundation. “Improving situational awareness with PulsePoint can help build safer, stronger, and more resilient communities.”
The latest AHA guidelines, published in Circulation, state that such community programs could increase bystander CPR to the roughly 326,000 cardiac arrests that happen outside the hospital each year.
About Sudden Cardiac Arrest
Although a heart attack can lead to sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), the two are not the same. SCA is when the heart malfunctions and suddenly stops beating unexpectedly, whereas a heart attack is when blood flow to the heart is blocked, but the heart continues to beat. Each year, more than 326,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur, making it the leading cause of death in the United States. Survival rates nationally for SCA are less than eight percent, but delivery of CPR can sustain life until paramedics arrive by maintaining vital blood flow to the heart and brain. However, only about a third of SCA victims receive bystander CPR. Without CPR, brain damage or death can occur in minutes. The average EMS response time is nine minutes, even in urban settings; after 10 minutes there is little chance of successful resuscitation. The American Heart Association estimates that effective bystander CPR, provided immediately after SCA, can double or triple a person’s chance of survival.
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If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Chief Roy Hari at 503-749-2894 or email at chief@aumsvillefire.org or Shannon Smith at shannon@pulsepoint.org.
