Haiti
Pocket First Aid & CPR App Used to Save Life – In Depth Look at App [App Review]
By now many have heard the amazing story of how Dan Woolley, a Colorado man in Haiti, used the Pocket First Aid & CPR app to help survive severe injuries he sustained in the earthquake. We highlighted this story last week when it broke, and we’ve always thought Pocket First Aid & CPR was a great app when it was first introduced in the summer of last year, and we even wrote about it back then.
At that time we put it in our “Apps for Patients” category not only because of the useful information it provides, but because it’s backed by the American Heart Association, the organization that sets the standard of care on first aid procedures. This app review will focus on the features of the app that helped Dan Woolley survive the injuries he sustained during the earthquake.
iPhone Medical App Used to Survive Earthquake: Survivor Treated an Open Leg Fracture and Head Laceration Successfully
There was a fascinating interview on the Today show of Don Woolley, an American filmmaker in Haiti who used his iPhone to help him survive the massive earthquake.
….Woolley had taken refuge in an elevator shaft, where he used an iPhone first-aid app to treat a compound fracture of his leg and a cut on his head. He had already used his digital SLR camera’s focusing light to illuminate his surroundings, and taken pictures of the wreckage to help find a safe place to wait to be rescued — or to die.
….Thanks to the iPhone first-aid app he’d downloaded, he knew how to fashion a bandage and tourniquet for his leg and to stop the bleeding from his head wound. The app also warned him not to fall asleep if he felt he was going into shock, so he set his cell phone’s alarm clock to go off every 20 minutes.
There hasn’t been any news of the actual medical application he used, and it’ll be interesting to find out in the future. My immediate guess would be Merck Manual – Home Edition, they have a great explanation on how to treat compound fractures, but there are other first aid applications out there as well.
In Haiti, Could Twitter and Other Mobile Medical Technology Drive Disaster Response?
As international relief efforts ramp up in Haiti, we are reminded of how fragile society is in many parts of the world. With shanty towns scattered around Port-au-Prince, a health and public services infrastructure devastated by years of natural and human disasters, and a centralized leadership that was only recently beginning to establish legitimacy, the earthquake in Haiti has created a public health crisis of the worst kind. And as we as a global community respond to this tragedy, its worth considering what lessons we can take away from it so that when disaster strikes again, we will be even more prepared. And with that, maybe it’s time we consider how we can actively leverage platforms like Twitter and Facebook to save lives in disaster zones.
Before proceeding any further, I’d like to remind folks that money is the most valuable assistance that most of us can provide right now. While it may feel a bit impersonal, adequate funds allow groups that are on the ground like Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross to purchase large volumes of essential supplies without worrying about the shipping costs associated with domestic material donations. Here at iMedicalApps, you can probably guess our favorite method of donating is via text message – for more information, check out this article from the New York Times. You can also donate directly to to the American Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, and Save the Children – these are just three large humanitarian organizations with extensive experience in Haiti with relief operations underway.
