CPR app helps crowd-source lifesaving

LAKELAND (FOX 13) - You need to get help as quickly as possible if you’re having a heart attack.

“Your blood flow stops throughout your body, and your vital organs and your brain begins to die,” warned assistant chief Robert Weech of Polk Fire Rescue.

If you get help within a minute, you have a 90-percent chance of surviving.  Within two minutes, an 80-percent chance of surviving.  But if you don’t live close to an emergency crew, it could take four, five, six minutes or more for them to arrive.  

Enter ‘Pulse Point,’ a free app that is being launched in Polk County.

With it, when you call 911 or someone calls for you, an immediate message goes out to people nearby who are trained in CPR.

“It will alert anyone within a mile radius that has the app of where the cardiac arrest is taking place,” explained Chris Jonckheer of PFR.

It’s a heads-up that someone is in trouble and needs help quickly.  It also notifies the person where the closest AEDs are located.

You can download pulse point on your phone from the iTunes or Google Play stores.  By taking a few minutes out of your life to get the app, you could be taking a step towards adding years to someone else’s.

“We think it’s going to help us in our ultimate survival rates throughout the county,” Weech added.

LINK: Visit www.pulsepoint.org for more info