Mobile app improves rates of CPR in cardiac arrest cases, studies find

Using a mobile app to find and alert people with CPR training who are near someone having a cardiac arrest improves the chances of the victim getting CPR and the person's survival rate, according to studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The chances of surviving a cardiac arrest outside a hospital are dismally low, according to past research and the NEJM studies. In the studies conducted in Sweden, which looked at out-of-hospital cardiac arrests from Jan. 1, 1990 through Dec. 31, 2011, only 4 percent of the victims survived 30 days past the incident -- if they didn't have someone performing CPR or using a defibrillator before emergency responders got to the scene. But the survival rate more than doubled -- to 10.5 percent -- if a bystander performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the studies found.

The researchers then investigated if bystander-initiated CPR rates could be increased with the use of mobile technology. A mobile "on-call" system with GPS was used to find and alert anyone with CPR training who was near, about 1,600 feet from, someone having a cardiac incident. The app pulled information from 911 dispatchers and sent it to trained volunteers in the form of texts and automated calls. Researchers found that the technology significantly increased the rate at which bystanders initiated CPR. In cases when the app wasn't used, only 48 percent of cardiac arrest victims got CPR from bystanders, the study found. But when the on-call system was activated, that rate jumped to 62 percent.