Wisc. Ambulance Company Implements PulsePoint App

Nov. 20--Gundersen Tri-State Ambulance introduced a phone app today that is intended to enlist the public in saving victims of sudden cardiac arrest.

Time is critical after such an attack, when the heart stops pumping blood, Dr. Chris Eberlein said during a press conference at Tri-State headquarters in La Crosse to demonstrate the PulsePoint app.

Sudden cardiac arrests outside of hospitals kill 1,000 people a day across the nation, and survival odds decrease 7 percent to 10 percent for every passing minute until help arrives, said Eberlein, a Gundersen emergency room doctor who also is medical director for Tri-State and the La Crosse Fire Department.

The free PulsePoint app is intended to close the gap between an arrest and the arrival of first responders by alerting nearby app users of the incident, the location and the proximity of artificial external defibrillators, said Tri-State executive director Tom Tornstrom.

For example, if someone at Fifth Avenue and Main Street called 911 to report a cardiac arrest, the 911 operator would send an alert to PulsePoint users within a quarter to a half mile, he said.

The app users can choose to respond to administer cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and use an AED, if needed, until first responders arrive, he said.

The alerts are available only for incidents in public places because of privacy issues, and Good Samaritan laws protect the users legally, Tornstrom said.

"The whole point of this is to get the community more involved inCPR ... to involve the community and citizens in saving lives," he said.

"We know from our experiences that the recovery rate is very good with CPR and assistance," he said.

Eberlein said La Crosse County has a good track record of nearly 45 percent survival rate for sudden cardiac arrest cases overall, compared with the national average of 20 percent. The local survival rate is 80 percent with bystander assistance, and the goal is to increase the overall rate, he said.

"We have a large community and a large amount of health care workers," he said. "Without bystander assistance, it would be hard to break into 50 percent or 60 percent."

The app from PulsePoint, a nonprofit organization in California, is available locally only in La Crosse County because of the current alignment of emergency dispatchers but may be expanded later, he said. The free app can be downloaded from the Apple iTunes Store and the Android Play Store.

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For more on this story, see Friday's La Crosse Tribune.

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