June 28, 2017 10.16 am This story is over 80 months old

New life-saving mobile app for East Midlands Ambulance Service

East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) is to become the first UK ambulance service outside of London to join a new life-saving mobile application. GoodSAM (Smartphone Activated Medics) is an alerting system that notifies a qualified lifesaver if a person is suffering a cardiac arrest. Qualified lifesavers will register to the app and if someone nearby…

East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) is to become the first UK ambulance service outside of London to join a new life-saving mobile application.

GoodSAM (Smartphone Activated Medics) is an alerting system that notifies a qualified lifesaver if a person is suffering a cardiac arrest.

Qualified lifesavers will register to the app and if someone nearby dials 999 in regards to a cardiac arrest the lifesaver will receive a notification to go and help.

Those wishing to sign up as a responder should download the GoodSAM Responder app for free. If you are an EMAS employer or volunteer, select East Midlands Ambulance Service to verify your application, anyone else should use GoodSAM.

Associate Medical Director at EMAS, Dr John Stephenson, said: “We respond to around 50 calls every day that are categorised as being immediately life threatening such as cardiac arrests.

“We have thousands of qualified people across the region; paramedics, police colleagues, nursing staff, etc; who would be willing to help someone but if they haven’t heard that shout for help they don’t know an emergency is happening nearby.

“GoodSAM allows us to make that shout for help louder.”

Professor Mark Wilson, Consultant Neurosurgeon and GoodSAM’s Medical Director, said: “If a patient has a cardiac arrest it is the first few minutes after the incident that determine the outcome – life, death, or long-term brain injury.

“We are delighted that the East Midlands Ambulance Service has partnered with us and would urge other organisations and medically trained individuals around the world to do so as well.”

For more information visit the GoodSAM website where you can also download the application.