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New app could help save lives in Naperville

City is first in Illinois to crowdsource cardiac rescue help

When someone's heart stops beating, every second counts.

That's why the Naperville Fire Department has become the first agency in Illinois to seek resident help in responding to cardiac emergencies through use of the PulsePoint Respond smartphone app.

The city is encouraging those who are certified to perform CPR or use an AED to download the free app, which will alert them when a patient is not breathing or when CPR is in progress within 12 blocks of their location.

Alerts feed into the app from the city's public safety dispatchers, who also will send firefighter/paramedics to the scene. Fire Chief Mark Puknaitis said the department has a response time of four to six minutes for 90 percent of its calls.

“But that's not enough. If somebody is suffering from cardiac arrest or their heart has stopped suddenly, you have to do something right away,” he said Thursday. “So we are really trying to advocate citizen involvement in everything we do.”

PulsePoint is available in the Apple app store and Google Play. Locally, the Naperville Fire Department's version should download automatically because the city is the only municipality in Illinois to offer the service among 1,800 participating communities in the U.S. and internationally.

Naperville has spent $11,000 to start using PulsePoint and will pay $3,000 a year so user downloads of the app will remain free.

PulsePoint offers a how-to screen for conducting CPR with information from the American Red Cross and a metronome to sound out the rate at which chest compressions should be spaced. Its AED how-to screen reminds users how to prepare the patient for use of an automatic external defibrillator, a device that shocks the heart to restart a normal rhythm.

Fire department Bureau Chief Andy Dina said these information pages can put people at ease if their training doesn't immediately return to mind when they arrive at a scene. Citizen responders also can be comforted that they're protected from liability under a good Samaritan law.

“We're empowering our citizens to help us out,” Dina said.

The app also displays the locations of all known AEDs within Naperville, which number more than 100. Naperville Park District Executive Director Ray McGury said five of the devices are available at parks, five at city buildings, 59 in schools and the rest inside places of worship, businesses and offices.

With a population of roughly 145,000, a concentration of large office buildings near I-88, hundreds of thousands of festival visitors each summer and more than 1 million park visitors each year, “the probability that something could happen goes up,” McGury said.

In fact, the fire department has responded to 70 CPR cases and 120 instances of patients not breathing so far this year, Puknaitis said.

But as schools and workplaces begin to require CPR and AED training, the number of people equipped to help also increases. Nationally, Puknaitis said 54 percent of Americans have such training.

“Think of all the lives we can save,” he said.

Naperville Mayor Steve Chirico said use of PulsePoint will make Naperville safer and illustrate collaboration between government and residents. With 547 users signed up for the app before the city even announced it, officials estimate at least 1,000 trained citizen responders will come on board.

“Naperville is not afraid to lead,” Chirico said. “We as a community are dedicated to innovation.”

  Naperville Fire Division Chief Andy Dina helped the department become the first in Illinois to use the PulsePoint Respond smartphone app to allow people with CPR or AED certification to help out when cardiac emergencies occur near them. Even before announcing the app on Thursday, Dina said 547 people had downloaded it. Bev Horne/bhorne@dailyherald.com
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