Life-saving app launches in Kingston

A new mobile phone app has been launched in Kingston with a goal of saving the lives of people who experience cardiac arrest outside of the hospital. Kingston is the first community in Canada to introduce PulsePoint – a free app that is already saving lives in more than 1,000 communities in the United States.

PulsePoint uses information from the Kingston Fire and Rescue dispatch system to alert CPR-trained users when someone in a nearby public place needs it. Those individuals can then provide assistance until emergency responders can get to the scene. The app also shows where to find a public defibrillator if one is close.

Kingston General Hospital emergency room physician Dr. Steven Brooks has been the driving force behind the Canadian debut of PulsePoint in Kingston.

“Calling 9-1-1, starting CPR and using an AED are the most significant interventions a bystander can make when someone suffers a cardiac arrest, doubling the chances of survival,” says Brooks. “Currently, the out-of-hospital survival rate for cardiac arrest is just five per cent in Canada. We can do better than this, and our hope is that PulsePoint will increase bystander intervention and help save more lives.”

Sudden cardiac arrest survivor Chet Babcock can attest to the importance of quick intervention after he went into cardiac arrest at the INVISTA Centre. Two of his CPR-trained hockey teammates administered CPR and a third teammate went in search of a defibrillator. He found one with the help of a volunteer firefighter who was in the lobby. They rushed back to administer the shock that likely restarted Babcock’s heart.

“The cardiac surgeon said that I would have had brain damage or died after five minutes if an AED [automated external defibrillator] hadn’t been used,” says Babcock.

In that scenario, PuslePoint would have alerted anyone within 500 meters of Babcock’s situation as well as pointed them to the location of the nearest AED.

“We are calling on Kingstonians who are trained in CPR to download the app,” says Kingston Mayor Brian Patterson.

With Kingston’s large military and healthcare workforce, that means there are a large number of citizens in the community qualified to administer CPR.

Making PulsePoint available in Kingston required a partnership that included Kingston Fire and Rescue, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, Kingston General Hospital, Queen’s University and Bell Canada.

The free app is available for download on Apple or Android devices (via your app store). You can also go to www.pulsepoint.org for more information.