Palmetto teen creates app to help healthcare workers when patient goes into cardiac arrest
PALMETTO, Fla. - At Buffalo Creek Middle School, 13-year-old Jace Billingsley is doing more than his daily classwork.
"Creating something that could help save someone's life is a really awesome thing to do, and I never thought that I could do something like this," he shared.
His app is called Code Blue. It's a code used when someone goes into cardiac or respiratory arrest.
"In the event of the code blue, you can start a code on the app and that will let you give them the starting medicine and it will tell you to give them compressions until you do a pulse check," Billingsley explained.
The app allows hospital staff and healthcare workers to accurately time medicine, pulse checks and compressions while logging what happened for records.
Billingsley was inspired to help medical staff because his father works as a respiratory therapist.
"I hope to make it better and improve on it add more features and make it easier for hospital staff to use," he said.
Billingsley is a member of the Technology Student Association or TSA. He and his classmates are putting technology to amazing new uses.
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"If people don’t learn how to use technology they won’t know how to use it when they need to for their businesses and occupations in the future and that’s a really important asset nowadays," he said.
Billingsley’s app won the 16th Congressional District App Challenge and he was honored by Congressman Vern Buchanan.
"I knew that this kid was going to change the world. This is something that is going to change the world. These kids can change the world. You just need to give them the opportunity," said Billingsley’s teacher TJ Leahy.
Billingsley is already making that happen.
"I think it will inspire hope in some people that a new generation will help them make new things that will help them," he said.
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