News Release - City of Bend Fire Department Brings Lifesaving Technology to Central Oregon with 9-1-1 Integrated Smartphone App

News Release - City of Bend Fire Dept. Brings Lifesaving Technology to Central Oregon with 9-1-1 Integrated Smartphone App

Release Date: 2/10/2016

To aid cardiac arrest victims quickly, Bend Fire & Rescue and the Deschutes County 9-1-1 Service District are making the PulsePoint app available to Central Oregonians.

The app alerts registered, CPR-certified users when a sudden cardiac arrest occurs in a nearby public place so they can get to the scene and start CPR in the critical minutes before EMS teams arrive. The app also allows registered users to locate nearby automatic external defibrillators (AEDs).

The PulsePoint partnership was formally launched Wednesday, Feb. 10th at Deschutes County 9-1-1. Representatives from Bend Fire & Rescue, the Black Butte Ranch Fire District, Cloverdale RFPD, Crooked River Ranch Fire & Rescue, Redmond Fire & Rescue, the Sisters-Camp Sherman Fire District and Sunriver Fire & Rescue announced the availability of the app.

“Public engagement can improve survival rates in cardiac arrest cases,” said Steve O’Malley, Bend Fire Deputy Chief of EMS Operations. “The Bend Fire Department has had a long-standing mission of improving cardiac arrest survival and we’ve made incredible strides. Dispatchers are involved. Bend Police has a role. This is the tool that now allows us to also notify anyone in the public who is willing to do CPR in a public place. This technology is the next piece in the chain of survival.”

Central Oregon residents can download the PulsePoint App through the iTunes Store™ and Google Play™. Businesses can download the PulsePoint AED App, which allows them to register locations of publicly accessible AEDs.  Once validated, these crowdsourced AEDs will be visible in the PulsePoint app.

“We’re proud to have helped facilitate this partnership between the 9-1-1, our customer agencies and the public,” said 9-1-1 Service District Director Steve Reinke. “It’s critical that cardiac arrest patients receive CPR as soon as possible. Our dispatch computer system pushes notifications to PulsePoint at the same time EMS responders are dispatched, so someone close by who otherwise may not have known help was needed can render assistance, saving crucial seconds.”

About the PulsePoint Foundation:

PulsePoint is a 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through the use of modern, location-aware mobile devices PulsePoint is building applications that work with local public safety agencies to improve communications with citizens and empower them to help reduce the millions of annual deaths from sudden cardiac arrest. Deployment of the PulsePoint app can significantly strengthen the “chain of survival” by improving bystander response to cardiac arrest victims in public settings and increasing the chance that lifesaving steps will be taken prior to the arrival of emergency medical services (EMS). PulsePoint is built and maintained by volunteer engineers at Workday, a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications and distributed by Physio-Control of Redmond, WA. Learn more at www.pulsepoint.org or join the conversation at Facebook and Twitter.
 

###