(La Porte, IN) - La Porte County now has a life-saving app that could turn ordinary people into heroes. It’s called Pulse Point.
As first responders are notified of a medical emergency, Pulse Point alerts subscribers to any nearby medical emergency as it’s happening and lets them know where the nearest AED is located. Pulse Point spokesperson Shannon Smith says the alert can help shave precious seconds off response times: “The goal is really to engage the community in cardiac arrest response.”
According to the American Heart Association, approximately 350,000 people suffer out-of-hospital cardiac events every year—74% of them occur at home, 15% in public places. Only between 10-12% of those victims survive. A person in sudden cardiac arrest has a survival rate that decreases by 10% for every minute that goes by without help after the first three minutes.
The Pulse Point app, which is totally free to the public, increases the likelihood that someone can rush to a victim’s aid. “You could be two blocks away from someone and be the first likely resource to help someone, but not know about it,” Smith said. “They could be on the floor above you, in the shop next door.” She likened it to the old expression, “Is there a doctor in the house?” Pulse Point is the 21st century equivalent. “The idea is to crowd source those Good Samaritans so they might be the first responders,” Smith said.
Pulse Point is operating in about 5,100 communities in North America, engaging about 1.1 million active users every month. Since 2011, the app has handled hundreds of thousands of cardiac arrest responses. The app is GPS-driven, so users can be notified wherever they happen to be.
A ceremony was held on Thursday at La Porte’s Municipal Airport to kick off the program, which is now available for everyone to use.
Dr. Gary Wheeland, a retired physician and board member of Health Foundation of La Porte, addressed the sizeable crowd gathered for the event. He reported that more people die from sudden cardiac arrest every year than colorectal cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, HIV, firearms, automobile accidents, and house fires combined. “We believe we can do better with the new technologies available,” he said, “and with aggressive effective bystander intervention.”
The Health Foundation of La Porte has helped provide over 250 AEDs throughout the community and has invested $600,000 in AED and CPR-related grants since 2017. In April, La Porte became the state’s first “HEARTSafe Community.”
HFL has funded Pulse Point’s startup, and county officials have agreed to keep funding it. You can sign up for free by visiting pulsepoint.org.
