PulsePoint app launches in Norfolk thanks to help from EVMS
The City of Norfolk is now a PulsePoint-enabled community, thanks in part to EVMS.
In early June, Norfolk Fire-Rescue announced the launch of the PulsePoint Respond app through a partnership with EVMS. The lifesaving app alerts people trained in hands-only CPR to cardiac emergencies in their vicinity to get CPR to a cardiac-arrest patient as quickly as possible.
EVMS’ Bystander CPR service-learning team, composed of EVMS' medical students, was integral in PulsePoint's development and implementation in the city. During the past four years, the team has worked with Norfolk Fire-Rescue to teach hands-only CPR within the community.
“EVMS is honored to collaborate on PulsePoint,” says Cynthia Romero, MD, Director of the M. Foscue Brock Institute for Community and Global Health at EVMS and Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine. “The PulsePoint app will now combine with the Bystander CPR training our students conduct throughout the city to enable more Norfolk residents to save lives. We’re grateful to be part of this unique — and vital —lifesaving effort in our hometown community.”
The day after the city launched the app, a cardiac emergency occurred at Norfolk International Airport, and two CPR-trained individuals were alerted.
Also launched at the same time was the companion PulsePoint AED app, which allows Norfolk citizens to report and update locations of automated external defibrillators so that emergency responders can find a nearby AED when a cardiac emergency occurs.
The American Heart Association reports that more than 350,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur each year in the United States. The AHA estimates that effective hands-only CPR provided immediately can more than double a person’s chance of survival. But in 2017, only 46 percent of sudden cardiac-arrest victims received bystander CPR.
The free PulsePoint app can be downloaded through Google Play and the App Store. Learn more at the PulsePoint website.