The Coronavirus Update

There’s a lot to report from the last couple of months!

Welcome to all the new volunteers who have joined GoodSAM. And we hope all the GoodSAM community is well in these difficult times. We have been very busy on a number of fronts as you’ll see below.

For those not aware, through Ambulance Services, GoodSAM has been alerting off duty doctors, nurses, paramedics, police, firefighters and first-aiders to cardiac arrests for 6 years now and this has saved many lives. Because of the Coronavirus situation, a number of services have now either stopped alerting responders or are only alerting staff / those with PPE. Please keep an eye on the GoodSAM website and in the UK the Resuscitation Council’s Statements for up to date advice and information as things hopefully return to a new normal. By the way, if you have registered as a NHS Volunteer, your affiliation will have changed over to them. You can switch back to your original organisation once the Covid-19 situation settles.

GoodSAM and the response to Covid-19:

Because of GoodSAM’s ability to geolocate volunteers and deploy them to those in need the NHS together with the Royal Voluntary Service asked if they could use the GoodSAM App and platform to task volunteers in response to the Covid-19 crisis. There are 1.5 million vulnerable people in isolation and even more who fall into the highly at-risk category. We of course said yes.

Tweet from the UK Prime Minister

We handled 750,000 people registering as NHS volunteers in just a few days, with 4,000 registrations per second at the peak.

We have now done the same process for the British Red Cross who are providing support especially in Scotland.

We have considerably adapted our platform for this purpose to effectively now being the world’s largest Computer Aided Dispatch system. With > 800,000 volunteers on the platform that makes the system bigger than Uber and Deliveroo combined in the UK.

Royal Voluntary Services Homepage

To be able to task volunteers we need to know who needs help. This has required GPs, local authorities, pharmacists and hospital clinicians to make referrals to request help. You may have seen that has been slow to start, but the platform will handle as many requests as come in with > 99.5% instantly matching to a volunteer. The Royal Voluntary Service who are running this have now opened up the system to enable self-referral, so if you know of someone who needs help, they simply have to call 0808 196 3646.

GoodSAM’s Video Platform:

With Ambulance Services

GoodSAM’s Instant-On-Scene and Instant Consultation video services are now being used by 999, 111 operators in a number of Ambulance Services. This system sends patients a text and they simply click on the link to start their consultation. There are no Apps to download. It also locates the patient and all in < 10 seconds (and can even measure pulse rate through the video feed).

GoodSAM Instant-on-scene locates, streams video and measures pulse, with no App.

A recent study by North West Ambulance Service has demonstrated that it makes a difference (in actual resource deployment, either upgrading or downgrading) in > 40% of calls. This means those who need help can get it faster – improving both the efficiency patients can find out what is wrong as well as the  efficiency of the ambulance service. The system is now being used now by 5 ambulance services across the UK. If your service is interested, please do get in touch.

With the Police:

Instant-On-Scene Video is also showing great success with Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Police. You may have seen some of the media reports.

The use of video has helped in many circumstances – from seeing road traffic collisions and ongoing assaults, to major incidents and to interviewing suspects.

Possibly the most important aspect though has been the lives saved. This has largely been due to the concurrent geolocation service that is built into the GoodSAM video system. This has meant that when 8 people were suffocating in the back of a lorry, GoodSAM could be deployed and that lorry could be tracked, and the occupants released safely. Similarly, the system has been used to locate those who have attempted suicide meaning rapid arrival of the police, early resuscitation and patient survival.

Clinic.co

GoodSAM has also launched a video consultation system that is free for all with an NHS.net (or Bupa or health.gov.au in Australia) email address: www.clinic.co. Again, no Apps to download. The system is now providing > 6,000 consultations a day and is being used not just for outpatient clinics but, for example in Northern Ireland, so that relatives can see their loved ones who are in intensive care.

The platform is incredibly simple to use (you can watch a video here), and if you are an NHS professional, please do register and try the system out.

Well – that’s a brief summary of some of the things which GoodSAM has been doing in these times of Coronavirus. Thank you once again for being part of our wonderful community! Please stay safe in the weeks ahead!

December 2018 Edition

This year has been incredibly exciting for GoodSAM as we continue to scale our lifesaving community. As 2018 draws to a close, we wanted to share some of our highlights – and also give you a sneak peek of what’s planned next…

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Welcoming our 2018 Ambulance Service Partners!

This year many more organisations have joined up with GoodSAM. These include both voluntary organisations such as the Royal Life Saving Society and Ambulance Services including:

Ambulance Victoria: Back in May, we teamed up with Ambulance Victoria to bring our live saving system to the state of Victoria in Australia. Thousands of Victorian Responders have joined us over the year, with strategic partnerships formed with Surf Life Saving, St John Ambulance Victoria, County Fire Authority and the Volunteer Coastguard.

Welsh Ambulance Service: In November, we went live with the Welsh Ambulance Service (WAS) with 2 ROSCs from GoodSAM alerts in the first weekend. With around 35 alerts generated by WAS every day and thousands of Responders signed up in Wales, we are looking forward to growing both the Responder network and the AED Registry across the region even further!

GoodSAM 2018 in Numbers

We are incredibly proud of grateful to the GoodSAM community who have volunteered hundreds of thousands of hours in sharing their skills in providing critical care in the minutes before Ambulance arrival.  Here’s a snapshot of what we’ve achieved this year; but with your help we can make 2019 even more successful:

• 7,825 alerts accepted by Responders.
• 42,894 Responders live globally.
• Over 40,000 verified AEDs on the PAD Registry & many thousands more on the mobile AED registry,

Thanks to you, the GoodSAM community, there are now many survivors – too many to list here but there are plenty of media stories:

Services coming on board in 2019

Most Services across the UK are integrated or are integrating – We’re delighted that UK Ambulance partners including South East Coast Ambulance Service, East of England Ambulance Service, North East Ambulance Service, Northern Ireland Ambulance Service and Scottish Ambulance Service are working with us to come on board next year.

Cutting Edge Innovation and Technical Development

Our Tech team have been busy working to bring even more advanced solutions to support emergency care – from rapid AED delivery to cutting edge video, we are continuing to innovate with partners across the world. Our latest update enhances alerting even to those who have accidentally forgotten to have the app running in the background of their phone – massively increasing alert rates. Here are just a few examples of the big innovations– stay tuned in 2019 for even more developments!

Instant.Help

Video offers the opportunity to transform patient care and dispatch. This year, with Kent, Surrey and Sussex and Great North Air Ambulance, we launched our ‘Instant on Scene’ video tool. The system gives the emergency services the ability to see patients and scene by sending a simple text message to the caller’s phone which opens their camera – with no app required.

Vital Signs

The ‘Instant on Scene’ system has also incorporated technology which can measure a patient’s pulse – just from the video stream! What’s more, this feature can measure multiple patients at any one time!

World’s Largest AED Registry

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#defibforSAM Campaign

Our #defibforSAM campaign added thousands more AEDs this year, maintaining GoodSAM as the UK’s and World’s largest AED Registry.

As a result, our community has now amassed over 40,000 AEDs worldwide – all of which have been verified and locations made available through the GoodSAM apps. We sync and share AED data with all of our Ambulance Service partners to support AED retrieval when its most needed… but this year, we have gone even further!

Remember if you spot an AED – see it, snap it, map it!

World’s First Mobile AED Registry

We all know AEDs on their own don’t save lives – but people with AEDs do! Our partnership with London Ambulance Service has enabled London Taxi Drivers like Paul, to carry AEDs in their vehicles and be alerted to respond to cardiac arrests around them. For the first time, Responders can now indicate they have an AED with them through their app. They are then displayed as Mobile AED Responders.

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Recognition in 2018

 GoodSAM joins European Emergency Number Association

In 2019, we will go live with new Emergency Services in Europe who are trialling both our video and cardiac tools. To mark our European engagement, GoodSAM has been nominated for the 2019 European 112 Awards. This Award recognises East Midlands Ambulance Service, who by partnering with GoodSAM, have gone beyond the expected to improve public outcomes and use of technology for good.

Who Cares Wins Award Winner – Innovation of the Year for NHS

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Meet Lynn and Matt – they both picked up The Sun’s ‘Who Cares Wins Award’ on behalf of GoodSAM. Matt, a GoodSAM Responder, was alerted by East Midlands Ambulance Service to provide life saving CPR to Lynn. The Innovation of the Year for the NHS Award recognises the contribution of the many GoodSAM Responders who share their skills every day.

Calling Emergency Services and Beyond

GoodSAM is highly collaborative and we are always looking for ways to grow the platform and develop new ways of delivering better patient outcomes – from alerting and dispatch to AED delivery! We’ve worked with Emergency Services to build features which will save lives and are looking forward to the impact they will make in 2019. If your organisation would like to collaborate with us, please do get in touch with the team at info@goodsamapp.org

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And finally…

Thank you so much for joining us. Every thing you do makes a difference! Please keep logged in and encourage your family, friends and colleagues to register and build our community across the world.

Remember, if you’re visiting loved ones this Christmas, download the Alerter App on their iOs, android or windows phone and show them how it works.

Together, we really can save lives in 2019 and beyond…

Wishing you a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

New System Enables Emergency Services to Open Smartphone Cameras to see Patients & Measure Pulse

We have launched a ground-breaking new feature, ‘Instant on Scene’ which gives emergency services the ability to see patients by sending a simple text message to the caller’s phone.  There is nothing to download in order to access the caller’s smartphone camera. This means the emergency services can assess how ill a patient is before arriving on scene, via mobile video streaming, enabling a better understanding of the level of care or resources that may be required.  The system also has incorporated technology that can measure a patient’s pulse – just from the video stream. This beta phase feature can measure multiple patients’ pulses simultaneously.

 

Our ‘Instant On Scene’ function is set to revolutionise how emergency services dispatch resources and triage patients and is currently being used by air ambulances, with ambulance services about to start.  The 999 call handler initiates a text message with a link that (with the caller’s permission) opens the caller’s video camera and sends location details, and the video streaming begins. The 999 call continues as audio passes through the phone call and the video simultaneously.  No video is stored on the caller’s phone and, importantly, as there is nothing to download in order to open the stream, access occurs insta

Professor Richard Lyon, Associate Medical Director of Kent Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance, said: “Time is critical in saving a person’s life or reducing long-term disability, and often we have limited information from bystanders about a patient’s or multiple patients’ injuries to make decisions.  Callers usually aren’t medically trained so information isn’t always accurate.

 “Being able to see the scene of the incident, not only the patients, but how many cars are involved for example, is game-changing in helping us decide what additional resources we might need to send, assessing who we might need to treat first or what medication we might need to give.”

The ability to remotely measure a patient’s pulse, the rate at which your heart beats, will also enhance confidence in decision making – whether that be increasing the urgency of the case or supporting a decision that it is lower priority. Current evaluation studies are demonstrating remarkable accuracy in this feature.  The system can read multiple patients’ pulses simultaneously with potential use for multiple casualty situations.

 Our Medical Director, Professor Mark Wilson, said: “Being able to see the patient and the scene without them having to download a video chat app, and getting a reading of their vital signs, dramatically improves remote assessment of illness. This can be through visualising the mechanisms of injury (e.g. number of vehicles involved) or how sick a patient appears. This information can radically improve resource management – prioritising patients who otherwise might not have been thought of as that urgent.

“The ‘Instant On Scene’ function of the GoodSAM platform can be used for any emergency response, not just ambulance services.  Police services could use it in response to both Minor and Major Incidents – providing a faster and more efficient response.  It is unbelievably simple to integrate into the Computer Aided Dispatch.”

The secure one-to-many video stream has patented frame rate optimisation to ensure video quality is always the best it could possibly be.  It works on any smartphone device and network. The video stream appears with a map locating the caller in the GoodSAM dashboard and it can be shared with other emergency services staff – for example the police or fire services.

In the UK, both Kent Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance and Great North Air Ambulance are using ‘Instant On Scene’.  GoodSAM is working in partnership with East Midlands Ambulance Service, who already use the App to alert responders to cardiac arrests, to explore how video streaming could be used to enable safer working between emergency services. Worldwide services plan to use the ‘Instant on Scene’ in various ways, for example First Aid Africa plan to use the function to provide remote advice in rural Africa, where there is no ambulance service.

Our Technical Director, Ali Ghorbangholi, said: “We are a leading technology company working closely with partners, continuously innovating and building solutions which are extremely affordable and scalable. Our solutions can be used by all of the services at a fraction of traditional costs. We would encourage any interested agencies to get in contact to discuss partnering up.”

If you would like to discuss Instant on Scene and how it could work with your organisation, please email info@goodsamapp.org.

For press enquiries, please contact s.murphy@goodsamapp.org.

GoodSAM 2017 Xmas Newsletter

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Have a GoodSAM Christmas and Peaceful 2018!

We wanted to say a massive “Thank you” to all the GoodSAM community who have made such a difference this year – especially to the new responders across the UK, Australia and New Zealand!

As a responder you may have already been alerted, or may not have been yet, but byhaving the App installed and running, when it matters, you really can make a difference. You may have seen the BBC story recently which demonstrates how effective it can be. Many survivors do not want publicity, and we completely respect that. But all responders in our eyes are silent heroes. Thank you, whether you have been alerted or not.

2017 has been an incredible year for us – again thanks to you. We are now integrated with some of the largest ambulance services in the world, and have incredible partner organisations. These include: Ambulance Victoria, both New Zealand Ambulance Services (St John and Wellington Free), East Midlands Ambulance Service, North West Ambulance Service and many more coming online in the next few months. In London the system continues to be very active.

The system is also working with other ambulance services in the US and Europe, and in places including Brazil, India and parts of Africa where there is no ambulance service.

St John Ambulance in the UK has partnered. If you’re a member or were trained by them, you can now select them as your verifying organisation (if already on the platform, log into your profile to select them) – this means they can inform you of important St John information through the App, and it can be used at events.

Give the GoodSAM Gift this Christmas!:

If your visiting loved ones this Christmas, please download the alerter App on their iOs, android or windows phone and show them how it works (especially if they live in an area where GoodSAM is not yet integrated).

We must also thank those who have uploaded AEDs, making GoodSAM by far the largest AED Registry, not only in the UK, but worldwide. We have over 30,000 AEDs logged, and because we syncronise them with the ambulance services we work with, the system is always up-to-date. We must especially thank Gareth Jenkin who shared his New Zealand AED data.

And we have a whole host of new features to look out for in 2018, most notably Instant-On-Scene, which is up and running and set to revolutionise pre-hospital care.

The platform enables emergency services to open the cameras on any mobile phone simply by sending a text!

So finally – thank you so much for registering. Please keep logged in and do tell your colleagues and encourage them to register.

Wishing you a very peaceful Christmas and safe New year.

Mark and Ali and the GoodSAM team.

GoodSAM Newsletter – November 2017

Hello to all the new GoodSAM Responders and Alerters who have joined our community! With so much going on we thought we’d send out a newsletter to keep you up-to-date on all that’s happening:

What’s new at GoodSAM HQ

EMAS leads GoodSAM Best Practice Event for Ambulance Services across the World!

Earlier this month, we were joined by Ambulance Services all over the world to share best practice on implementing GoodSAM. Delegates from Brazil, Australia and New Zealand joined our Webinar with East Midlands Ambulance Service to learn how best to manage adoption and maximise the impact of the platform. Watch out for a host of other Ambulance Services integrating with us very soon!

GoodSAM poised to go live with even more Ambulance Services in the UK and Australia next year!                                                                                                                                                                        

GoodSAM has now been live with LAS for two years and EMAS for nearly six months – and we are rolling out across the UK with North West, North East and East of England Ambulance Services coming online very soon! Further integrations in Australia and New Zealand are also due to be announced shortly! We are extremely grateful to the GoodSAM community who have highlighted the project to their Services – let us know if we can help introduce it to your area!!!

Building partnerships at the Resuscitation UK Scientific Symposium

We are so grateful to be endorsed by the UK Resuscitation Council and for the opportunity to speak at their Scientific Symposium this month. Hospitals, fire, police and other emergency services globally are joining GoodSAM as Verifying Organisations – it’s free and has many other uses including major incident management and comms with staff.  If your Organisation isn’t listed as a GoodSAM Verifying Organisation, contact your Resuscitation Officer or ask us for more information!

In the Community

Building the World’s Largest AED Registry
The GoodSAM Community has amassed an amazing 30,000 AEDs worldwide – all of which have been verified and locations made avaliable through the GoodSAM apps! We are currently working closely with Ambulance Victoria in Australia to to help them map the 40,000 AEDs not known about! Remember: If you spot an AED around you – remember to take a snap and map it using the apps!

Emergency Medical Care Response in Brazil

We are working with local volunteer fire and emergency services across the world to provide emergency medical care response. For example, we are really excited to be working with Bombeiros Voluntarios de Santa Caterina in Brazil on innovation which is really changing pre-hospital care globally!

GoodSAM for all!

Our amazing community has been growing rapidly over the last few months  – we are now operational in over 30 countries! We’ve been busy translating the GoodSAM apps into French, Spanish, German and Portuguese to reach even more people and continue our mission of harnessing technology to save lives!

In the Media 

To stay up to date on all things GoodSAM, be sure to check out some of the recent stories. Here are a few we thought that you might find interesting:

Help arrives quickly for injured man thanks to app!

Tech for good projects double in two years

 

Click here for our brochure and here for our poster. We’ve also put together a video which you can use to explain GoodSAM to friends and colleagues. Please do share it!

 

Finally, don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. 

 

New partnership will help save more lives across the East Midlands

We have partnered with a second UK ambulance service, East Midlands, to reduce death from life-threatening illnesses and injury, including cardiac arrest.  GoodSAM is revolutionising emergency response, with a further four UK Ambulances Services set  to adopt the platform in the coming months. With support from Nesta, it is anticipated that the platform will be UK wide by 2019.

Dr John Stephenson, Associate Medical Director at EMAS, 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.”

For every minute someone who is in cardiac arrest does not receive Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) or defibrillation, their chance of survival fall by 10%. When someone is in cardiac arrest seconds count, while the ambulance service may arrive within minutes it is vital to alert people with the right life support training skills who are in the immediate vicinity of the patient to start CPR until ambulance personnel arrive.

The Good Samaritan lifesaving community are of off-duty medical staff and people who are trained in  CPR. The app means they can now be automatically alerted directly to a nearby emergency when a 999 call is received by East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS). This means that when someone dials 999 and reports a patient as ‘not conscious and not breathing’, in addition to dispatching an ambulance, five nearby GoodSAM responders are also alerted.  Details of the nearest defibrillator (AED) are also provided to responders, through the app’s Defibrilocator – the world’s largest AED Registry. By arriving a few minutes before the ambulance and undertaking high quality resuscitation, survival from cardiac arrest is set to be transformed. The system does not replace the Ambulance Service, with an East Midlands Ambulance crew continuing to be dispatched in the usual way.

 

Commenting on the partnership, GoodSAM’s Technical Director and Co-Founder, Ali Ghorbangholi said: “There are first aid trained people all around us but usually the first they know of a neighbour having a cardiac arrest is an ambulance appearing in their street. If they had known and started CPR a few minutes prior to the ambulance arriving, chances of survival can be considerably increased. GoodSAM makes this possible, connecting those with the skills to the people in their minute of need.

“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 continue to do so as well. Everyone who has a smartphone has a life-saving device in their pocket.  They just need to download the GoodSAM app in case they ever need to use it.”

EMAS is the first UK region outside of London to integrate with GoodSAM. The technology has been successfully integrated into the London Ambulance Service’s CAD) for over a year and a half and is being triggered 20-30 times a day. Several survivor stories of Londoners have emerged.   Thanks to funding from the Cabinet Office and Big Lottery Fund, GoodSAM continues to innovate and scale across the UK.

Both the GoodSam Alerter and Responder apps are available to download free for Android and iOS from iTunes and GooglePlay.

Happy New Year – 2017!

Happy New year from GoodSAM !

We just wanted to thank you for being part of the GoodSAM community this past year and say 2017 is looking even more exciting.

The earlier CPR and AED use that the GoodSAM system enables really is saving lives and as our responder density and integration with more ambulance services grows in 2017, this will increase even more. We can only do this with your support – please do stay logged in and if your certification / ID expires, please upload a new one.

We have a new video too which you can use to explain GoodSAM to other friends and colleagues who might be potential responders. Please do share it!

The GoodSAM features grow and grow, so much so that we have now developed GoodSAM Pro – this does even more allowing formal booking on / off of CFRs and co-responders for shifts and specific dispatching with full CAD integration. For more details see www.goodsamapp.org. This has the potential to make huge efficiency savings and is much more convenient to use. It works on any smartphone and is also being made ready for the Emergency Services Network.

There’s a new video for this too! Again, please do spread the word!

Thank you so much again for your support.

Wishing you a very safe and peaceful 2017.

The GoodSAM team.

Merry Christmas from the GoodSAM team

Thanks for being part of the GoodSAM community!

It’s been an incredible year with GoodSAM, being used in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, India, Brazil and across Europe!

Did you get alerted? Thank you for responding if you did! In London alone there have been over 10,000 activations!

Most of the ambulance services in the UK, and others around the world are now lined up to integrate next year so it’s very exciting times ahead.

And there are a host of new tools within GoodSAM Pro that will revolutionise pre-hospital CFR response! Do keep an eye out!

Please continue to encourage others to join. If you work in a hospital, please tell your Resus leads to get in touch. If you’re in the Police or Fire Service, can we get your service on board? – Please do tell those in charge about the platform!

And if visiting your folks this Christmas, please do download the alerter app on their phone. It can then alert their neighbours as well as dial the emergency services if needed.

Wishing everyone a peaceful Christmas and all the very best for 2017!

Mark and Ali
and the rest of the GoodSAM team.

GoodSAM helps Cardiac Arrest Survivor

Two off duty Ambulance staff and St John Ambulance volunteers were able to help save the life of a martial arts enthusiast who suffered a cardiac arrest after they were alerted to the emergency by the GoodSAM App.

Rachel Love (an Incident Response Officer for London Ambulance Service) and Andrew Larby (a Paramedic with LAS) were running a training session for community first responders (CFRs) at Bromley ambulance station, when they were alerted to the cardiac arrest at a nearby church hall via GoodSAM.

Rachel and Andrew

The pair rushed to the scene to find a 53-year-old man being given cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) by another member of the taekwondo club. They used the automated external defibrillator (AED), which they had with them because of the training session, to deliver an electric shock to the man’s heart.

They then administered five more rounds of CPR which revived the casualty just as London Ambulance Service paramedics arrived at the scene.

“I couldn’t believe it when he started breathing again and said ‘I can see you’,” said Rachel.

Rachel, an incident response officer with London Ambulance Service, explained how a series of coincidences meant they were both in exactly the right place at the right time She explains: “The CFR training session was running late which was lucky because otherwise we wouldn’t have been nearby. Thankfully, we were close enough and had the right life-saving equipment to make a difference.’

The casualty was taken to hospital where he made a good recovery after undergoing angioplasty. He is returning to work in London this week.

Dr Mark Wilson, Medical Director of the GoodSAM app said: “This is a fantastic example of how GoodSAM technology can help save lives. There are thousands of first aid trained and off duty professionals who can know how to perform high quality CPR and use an AED.   The app simply connects these good Samaritans with members of the public in their minute of need.  If more people, both medically trained and not, downloaded GoodSAM we could have more outcomes like this.”

Anyone can download GoodSAM App free:

• Medically trained professionals download the Responder version on the App Store or Play Store.
• Members of the public download the Alerter version on the App Store or Play Store

WORLD FIRST: Secure live video streaming technology for GoodSAM

GoodSAM has become the first emergency healthcare app in the world to develop a secure in-app live video streaming function. Via a smartphone, the app’s new function can now provide emergency care providers and registered first responders the ability to see a patient on scene and assess the severity of their injuries remotely, which can help determine correct resources and urgency of care needed.

The app, which uses GPS technology to alert trained first responders including off duty doctors, nurses and paramedics, to nearby medical emergencies, is available to download free on any smartphone device.  The video function, which is currently available on iOS software and will soon be available on Android, is embedded within the app.  Among its many benefits; nearby medically trained first responders who have accepted to help the patient can, in advance, see the seriousness of the patient or the safety of the scene; emergency care providers that integrate with the app can see exactly what is happening on scene, which could aid dispatch decisions and; in major incidents it could provide rescuers with direct access to what is going on, on the ground.

Commenting on the innovation, GoodSAM’s Medical Director Dr Mark Wilson, said: “This is a major breakthrough in healthcare technology. The possible benefits to patients are incredible.  Allowing medical professionals access to see a patient can help in assessing the patient’s needs. Via the app, the responder can see the patient and the scene and as ambulance services utilise the technology it may aid appropriate resourcing. A picture paints a thousand words and in many ways this can bring the emergency services to the scene immediately.” 

The app uses numerous technologies to ensure that high levels of security and patient confidentiality are maintained. GoodSAM’s Technical Director Ali Ghorbangholi who led the development of the App explains, “GoodSAM’s new video streaming function offers end-to-end encryption between users on all servers ensuring private, safe and secure real-time communications.  In transferring the data between users, the data is first encrypted using the Datagram Transport Layer Security, which prevents sniffing or information tampering. To further reinforce this, the app also encrypts video and audio data via the Secure Real Time Protocol method, ensuring that voice and video traffic cannot be heard or seen by unauthorised parties.” 

The GoodSAM App can be easily integrated into an ambulance service’s dispatch system to automatically alert a community of off-duty ambulance staff and people trained in life support directly from a 999 call. The London Ambulance Service recently became the first ambulance service in the world to use this function. The App is now hoping to create similar partnerships with other global ambulance services and the live video streaming function is now available for any organisations who wish to utilise it.

When a member of the public comes across a medical emergency, by touching the GoodSAM emergency button it will immediately dial 999 but while the caller is talking to the emergency control operators, their phone is also alerting first responders within 200 metres who can help until the emergency services arrive.  The video function can be simultaneously accessed by multiple parties if needed; the first responder while they are on route to help, or by ambulance services who integrate the technology into their dispatch system.

With over 7,000 first responders currently signed up as Good Samaritans across the world, the creators are appealing for more medically trained people to sign up as ‘responders’ and to members of the public to become ‘alerters’. Both the GoodSAM Alerter and Responder apps are available free to download for Android and iOS from ITunes and GooglePlay.

Dr Wilson added: “If someone is in cardiac arrest the earlier quality CPR can be performed, the better the chance of patient survival.  GoodSAM alerts nearby first responders that can go and help before the ambulance service arrives.  If a defibrillator is readily available, the location of which is shown on the GoodSAM app, patients are up to six times as likely to survive. Everyone who has a smartphone has a life-saving device in their pocket.  They just need to download the GoodSAM app in case they ever need to use it.” 

For media enquiries please contact s.murphy@goodsamapp.org