If someone suffers a heart attack the time taken to receive medical help is critical; each minutes delay can be the difference between life or death. The London Ambulance Service has been experimenting with a new app, that can be downloaded onto a portable appliance. The app is designed to detect if a person is suffering a heart attack and, should such a situation arise, alert the nearest first aid or medical service.
The app is called GoodSAM (an acronym for Good (S)martphone (A)ctivated (M)edics.) Although the app will be future designed to send a signal, its immediate function is to alert those passing by the person suffering a heart attack. By activating a command built into the app, a signal; is sent to up to three nearby trained responders.
The man who invented the app is Mark Wilson. He told New Scientist magazine: “It makes a big difference if you can get there early, so we have to use technology to find a way of providing that. We think this is a way of doing it.”
The video below provides more details about the functionality of the app:
In trials in London, the app has proved to be effective, with 20 and 30 tests each day, where medically trained responders have been alerted to the scene of a suspected cardiac arrest.
A new development with the app, added over the course of the trials, is a video streaming function, designed to allow bystanders to send live video of the patient to responders.
A similar system called PulsePoint is being used in the U.S. Both PulsePoint and GoodSAM are examples of aspects of health and medicine harnessing digital platforms. For more on the technological developments, Digital Journal has recently examined innovative ‘smart’ inhalers that can transmit information about a patient and the use of an inhaler wirelessly.
