Fairfax County Fire and Rescue is spotlighting an app designed to get help to cardiac arrest victims in the minutes before first responders arrive.
As Tom Colbert watched what happened to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin on Monday Night Football, he had a bit of a flashback.
“When he stood up and then all of a sudden just collapsed, that’s basically what I did,” Colbert said.
Colbert was playing in a golf tournament in October 2021 when his heart stopped. He survived because his golf partner immediately started CPR with help from another man while two other golfers grabbed a nearby automated external defibrillator (AED).
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“They had shocked me twice, and then by then, Fairfax County Fire and Rescue showed up, and since I was already hooked up, they shocked me the third time, and that’s when I revived,” Colbert said.
In the wake of Hamlin’s on-field collapse, Fairfax County Fire and Rescue called renewed attention to a life-saving app called PulsePoint aimed at helping connect victims with bystanders willing to do CPR or use an AED.
“PulsePoint alerts users of the application to cardiac events near them that may require CPR,” Fairfax County Fire and Rescue nurse Karen Kovach said.
The PulsePoint app was first rolled out in the county in January 2021. Kovach said survival after sudden cardiac arrest decreases 10% for every minute without a response.
“So, when you factor in the average response time of EMS to be about five minutes, it highlights the importance of intervention from bystanders, or as we like to call them, immediate responders,” Kovach said.
Already about 5,000 Fairfax County residents open the app monthly. About 1,300 have enabled the CPR alert, meaning they are willing to help in an emergency.
The alert can be triggered when a 911 call comes in. If an app user is near the victim, the alert directs them to the person who needs CPR. It also shows the location of any nearby AEDs.
“You don’t need to have training to use an AED,” Kovach said. “You retrieve it, turn it on and it will walk you through the rest of the steps.”
While the app didn’t factor into Colbert’s survival, he views it as a key tool for others.
