The City of Virginia Beach is now a PulsePoint-connected community. 911 dispatchers have the ability to alert CPR-trained residents of a nearby cardiac emergency and the location of nearest AED in public places while first responders are enroute.
App FAQs
The application has three primary components – the PulsePoint Respond mobile app, the PulsePoint (SaaS) cloud service resource, and PulsePoint Connect.
One version of the PulsePoint Respond app (on each platform) support all agencies. The PulsePoint cloud service resource (Amazon EC2-VPC) manages all communications between individual personal mobile devices and the real-time incident data of PulsePoint-connected agencies.
Emergency Communication Centers (ECC) communicate with the PulsePoint cloud service through the PulsePoint Connect application. PulsePoint Connect runs within the local ECC and delivers select dispatch system data to the PulsePoint cloud service.
The service utilizes encrypted communication and secure identification (HTTPS with SSL/TLS) within a highly reliable multi-zone environment.
The PulsePoint Respond app, cloud service, and Connect product are all provided and maintained by the PulsePoint Foundation.
Also available is PulsePoint AED, a free companion app for strengthening the chain of survival for cardiac arrest victims. Members of the community download PulsePoint AED and use it to report and confirm AED locations.
They simply describe a new location, snap a picture, and the information is stored for local authorities to verify. After that, the AED location data is made available to anyone using PulsePoint Respond.
PulsePoint Registry provides complete control over the community’s Public Access Defibrillation (PAD) program. Tightly integrated with both PulsePoint Respond and PulsePoint AED, PulsePoint Registry provides a simple workflow to manage critical registry tasks.
PulsePoint Registry also provides the capability to integrate all collected community AED information directly into the dispatch system map—on existing console monitors.
The foundation provides PulsePoint Registry free of charge to connected agencies.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects the privacy of individually identifiable health information. On a ‘CPR Needed’ notification, the app reports only an address (in a public place) and a business name, if available.
Individually identifiable health information, such as name, birth date, or Social Security Number are not reported or known to the PulsePoint application.
In addition, PulsePoint has retained Page, Wolfberg & Wirth, LLC to assist agencies understand legal issues related to the implementation of PulsePoint. PWW is well respected EMS law firm specializing in dispatch liability and HIPAA issues.
The PulsePoint app is a Location-Based Service (LBS) with the ability to make use of the geographical position of your mobile device. The LBS capabilities of the app allow you to see your current location relative to the incidents occurring around you.
This is an optional feature that is not enabled by default – you must specially opt-in to utilize this functionality. In addition, if you opt-in to the CPR/AED notification, the PulsePoint server will store your current location for immediate reference during an emergency where you may be nearby.
In this case, only the current location of your device is stored (no movement history is maintained) and your identity is never known to the PulsePoint application.
CPR today is very easy to perform and can be learned quickly in informal settings such as community street fairs, group training sessions, take-home DVD-based courses, or even by watching brief online videos.
These types of training environments do not provide certificates of other forms of skill documentation. Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) actually require no training to use.
Therefore, there is no reason or even ability to verify that someone volunteering to help others with CPR or an AED has been formally trained. Learn how you can help save a life in this one-minute American Heart Association video showing Hands-Only CPR in action.
A CPR notification arrives as a normal push notification. This notification will be accompanied by a distinctive alert tone. Opening the notification will load the PulsePoint app. The screen will display your current location, the general reported location of the cardiac arrest victim, and any nearby Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs).
To receive a CPR Needed activation you must have the CPR notification type selected in the Settings Menu and you must be in the immediate vicinity of a reported cardiac arrest. Notification radiuses vary by jurisdiction.
Only about a third of Sudden Cardiac Arrest victims receive bystander CPR, and public access Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) are used less than 3% of the time when needed and available. The current situation is far too few bystander rescuers – not too many.
The goal of the app is to engage additional bystanders in these lifesaving acts. If this situation was to truly materialize in the future it would be a major success and the radius of the notification could be reduced.
For the app to be activated someone must first call the local emergency number (such as 911) to begin a normal public safety response. This means that the victim is likely not alone when the CPR/AED notifications are made.
In addition, the app is only activated for incidents occurring in public places (not at someone’s home for example) furthering the likelihood that others will be present.
Also, since the app is only activated on devices in the immediate vicinity of the victim, a “Bad Samaritan” would have little opportunity to be in the right place at the right time.
The app aims to notify those essentially within walking distance of the event location. However, this distance is configurable on an agency by agency basis. Higher population densities usually warrant a smaller notification radius. Likewise, a rural area with longer local government response times may choose to notify over a broader area.
The purpose of the Good Samaritan Law is to protect individuals that assist a victim during a medical emergency. Most Good Samaritan laws are created specifically for the general public. The law assumes that there is no medically trained person available to assist the victim.
Since the Good Samaritan typically does not have medical training, the law protects him or her from being liable from injury or death caused to the victim during a medical emergency.
A general layperson is protected under the Good Samaritan laws as long as he or she has good intentions to aid the victim to the best of his or her ability during a medical emergency.
Since each state law has specific guidelines, and this text does not provide a worldwide view of this matter, you should familiarize yourself with the laws or acts applicable to you. A typical example of the wording appears below.
“…a person, who, in good faith, lends emergency care or assistance without compensation at the place of an emergency or accident, and who was acting as a reasonable and prudent person would have acted under the circumstances present at the scene at the time the services were rendered, shall not be liable for any civil damages for acts or omissions performed in good faith.”
With dispatchers making rapid over-the-telephone assessments of patients based on the observations of untrained callers, an incorrect determination can be made. For example, such a situation could occur with someone who has just had a grand mal seizure, passed out from too much alcohol, or has a very high blood sugar.
However, if you tried to do CPR on such an individual he or she would probably moan and possibly even try to push you away. Also, an AED would not deliver a shock to a person in any condition where an effective heartbeat was present.
Typically PulsePoint queries public data sources such as the Residential/Commercial Indicator (RDI) from the USPS (PulsePoint uses the USPS address validation API from SmartyStreets) along with other sources such as the Google Places API to make this determination.
The PulsePoint Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization funded through a combination of license fees paid by adopting agencies and donations from private individuals and charitable foundations. Key sponsors include Workday, The Wireless Foundation, and El Camino Hospital. Learn more about the foundation.