Excerpts from the journal-topics.com:
In 2018, Mount Prospect experienced 25 cardiac arrest incidents. Of those, 18 were pronounced dead at the scene, seven were taken to a hospital where six patients recovered and one passed away.
Mount Prospect Fire Chief Brian Lambel presented the PulsePoint app to the village board Committee of the Whole meeting. The app, which has been used in Naperville for the past three years, allows volunteers trained in CPR and/or to use an automatic external defibrillator (AED) to register for an alert if there is a cardiac arrest event reported nearby.
The 911 system connects with the app and sends an alert to the mobile phones of volunteers who are within a quarter mile of the victim’s location. The app will also advise where the nearest public AED is located. Emphasizing that his investigation and consideration of PulsePoint is in the preliminary stages, Lambel said it will cost $10,000 to implement with an annual subscription fee of either $8,000 or $13,000.
The fire department is part of the Northwest Central Dispatch (NWCD) system which dispatches 11 fire departments. If they will embrace the program, the costs would be shared by all 11 communities.
If Mount Prospect were to join the PulsePoint program alone, the village would bear the entire implementation fee and the annual subscription fee, which would be reduced to $8,000, the price for communities of under 300,000 residents.
Lambel assured the board there would be after-action surveys that go out, “If it doesn’t work or there are problems we either fix the problem or get rid of the app.”
“3,300 communities in 42 states already have PulsePoint,” Lambel said. Rapid City, SD, is a town slightly larger than Mount Prospect and is reporting that 85% of cardiac incidents are getting early CPR with a reported 45% survival rate.
