Fla. County Implementing PulsePoint App to Bolster Bystander CPR
Oct. 19--On a December morning last year, Doug Stine and two coworkers were driving to their next work assignment for a billboard company when he suffered a cardiac arrest.
Stine had just handed his phone to his colleague to show him a picture, "and when he turned around to hand me back my phone, I was blue and slumped over," said Stine, 36, who lives south of Seattle.
His coworkers dialed 911, but before fire trucks and ambulances arrived, an ER doctor, an off-duty EMT and another person had rushed to his side and started performing CPR.
Stine credits his survival partly to an app called PulsePoint, which alerted the nearby citizens who kept him resuscitated until EMS arrived.
Soon, Orange County residents with a PulsePoint app will also be able to rush to the help of nearby individuals in cardiac arrest.
At a cost of $100,000 for five years, the county is integrating the app's software to its 911 dispatch system and expects to roll it out within the next six months.
"With people nearby and the AEDs out there, this really helps as a connection point," said Chief Otto Drozd of Orange County Fire Rescue Department. "It really has the potential to save lives."
When there's a cardiac arrest in a public area, the app is activated via the 911 system and sends an alert to nearby users who have the app on their phone and can perform CPR. It also shows the location of nearby automatic defibrillators.
"There's nothing like it in the marketplace to help with citizen response," said Orlando Fire Department Deputy Chief Richard Wales. "This is groundbreaking in notifying other lay rescuers."
Orlando was among the first communities in Florida to implement the app three years ago. Since then, more than two dozen other communities in Florida, including The Villages, have implemented PulsePoint.
The nonprofit charges communities based on their size, an upfront integration cost and an annual maintenance fee. As one of the early users, Orlando had the system integrated for free.
Wales said he didn't have data on how many lives PulsePoint may have helped save in Orlando. "I get an event log of PulsePoint activations and the number of responders who were alerted. We have people arrive to the scenes and provide citizen CPR," he said.
Cardiac arrest is different from a heart attack. In cardiac arrest, the heart's electrical system unexpectedly stops functioning. A heart attack, on the other hand, is a plumbing issue and happens when the blood flow to the heart is somehow blocked.
Sudden cardiac arrest can happen to anyone and sometimes without warning. Nearly 325,000 sudden cardiac arrests happen each year in the United States outside of hospitals, according to the American Heart Association. The average survival rate is 10 percent. But in cases when someone who could administer CPR was nearby, one in three people survived.
The odds of surviving cardiac arrest drops by 10 percent for every minute that the patient doesn't receive any intervention such as CPR or AED.
"Time is of the essence when you talk about survivability of cardiac arrests," said Wales. "It's all about circulating that blood until the fire department arrives. ... The worst thing you can do is do nothing."
PulsePoint is a free app, and anyone can download it. In addition to nearby cardiac arrest alerts, it also shows the location of the nearest AEDs and allows users to listen to the 911 scanner.
Drozd said that the county will start promoting it in various community events, including high school CPR trainings, once the app is integrated into the dispatch system.
Martha Lopez, founder of Saving Young Hearts, lost her 10-year-old son Sean to sudden cardiac arrest in 2004. Neighbors gave him CPR, but "unfortunately an AED wasn't available until EMS arrived, and unfortunately for him, it was too late," she said.
Lopez has been a strong advocate of hands-only CPR education and AED installation in public places in Central Florida.
"A lot of people don't understand that they can make a difference in someone's life and death," she said. "I tell people who are hesitant, 'What if it was your loved one? Do you want people to stand back?'"
PulsePoint is implemented in nearly 2,000 communities in 28 states and has about 800,000 active users, according to the nonprofit company. It is now partnering with Seattle to conduct a study to measure its impact on increasing patients' survival rate.
"We always talk about neighbors helping neighbors and this is the ultimate characterization of that," said Drozd.
nmiller@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5158
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