PRESS RELEASE

To aid cardiac arrest victims quickly, the Long Beach Fire Department, The PulsePoint Foundation and Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center, Long Beach are making the PulsePoint app available to individuals in the City of Long Beach today. Aimed at average citizens and off-duty professionals trained in CPR, the app alerts registered users when a sudden cardiac arrest occurs in a public place in their immediate vicinity. Informed at the same time as emergency responders, users are given detailed instructions, including the location of automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) nearby.

More than 22,167 people in Los Angeles County have already downloaded the app.  A widespread promotional campaign that starts on October 4 with the READY Long Beach Community Preparedness Expo at Heartwell Park will help raise awareness among the 461,000 residents of Long Beach.

"The PulsePoint App will be a vital asset to our City because it creates more first responders to augment our emergency medical personnel," Mayor Robert Garcia said.  "If you're CPR-trained, please download the PulsePoint app now to help save a life.”

The City Council last month expressed support of the PulsePoint app and requested that the City prepare an outreach strategy to help inform the community of this new technology, based on a request brought forth by Councilmembers Stacy Mungo and Suzie Price.

The leading cause of death in the U.S., cardiac arrests outside hospitals are responsible for more than 1,000 deaths a day and 424,000 a year. Effective CPR administered immediately after a cardiac arrest can potentially double or triple the victim’s chance of survival, but less than half of victims receive that immediate help.

“The PulsePoint app enables citizens that are trained in CPR to take lifesaving action that will make a difference in our community and increase the chance of survivability during a sudden cardiac arrest,” said Long Beach Fire Chief Michael DuRee. “PulsePoint will save lives. In partnership with Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center, Long Beach, we are committed to introducing technology that can help us build a safer, more resilient community."

“As a health care organization committed to the health of individuals and the community, Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center is proud to partner with the City of Long Beach and the Long Beach Fire Department to get the word out about PulsePoint,” said St. Mary Medical Center President/CEO Thomas A. Salerno.  “PulsePoint has been proven to save lives, so this is right in line with our organizational mission.”

“The PulsePoint App is an important tool that the public can use to help their neighbors in time of need,” Councilmember Mungo said. “I especially encourage people to attend the Citywide “READY Long Beach” Community Preparedness Expo on Saturday, October 4, to learn how to prepare for earthquakes, fires, floods and other disasters.”

The free event, open to the public, will be from 10 am to 5 pm at Heartwell Park, near the corner of Clark and Carson streets. 

In addition to the PulsePoint app, the Long Beach Fire Department will be using the PulsePoint AED app to help locate and record all public access defibrillators in the City for use during cardiac arrest emergencies. Once validated, these crowdsourced AED will be visible in the PulsePoint app as well as for dispatcher use during emergency calls. The PulsePoint apps are available for iPhone and Android and can be downloaded from the iTunes Store and Google Play.

About the Long Beach Fire Department
Founded in 1897, the Long Beach Fire Department is rich with tradition and provides the highest level of service to the City of Long Beach. Each day, 110 emergency responders are on duty to provide fire protection, life safety and environmental protection services to more than 461,000 residents and commercial businesses in Long Beach’s 52.3-square-mile area. When called into action following major disasters throughout the State of California, the Department’s Urban Search and Rescue Team responds as members of California Regional Task Force 3. Once back in Long Beach, these same elite responders can be found at work providing these same services to our community. The Department proudly continues to be a frontrunner in firefighting technology, offering specialized training opportunities in Urban Search and Rescue, Emergency Medical Services, Hazardous Materials, Disaster Management, and Homeland Security. Behind the scenes, more than 70 dedicated business professionals help carry out the mission. Learn more at www.longbeach.gov/fire.  

About the PulsePoint Foundation
PulsePoint is a 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through the use of modern, location-aware mobile devices PulsePoint is building applications that work with local public safety agencies to improve communications with citizens and empower them to help reduce the millions of annual deaths from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA).

Deployment of the PulsePoint app can significantly strengthen the “chain of survival” by improving bystander response to SCA victims in public settings and increasing the chance that lifesaving steps will be taken prior to the arrival of emergency medical services (EMS). PulsePoint is built and maintained by volunteer engineers at Workday, a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications and distributed by Physio-Control of Redmond, WA. Learn more at www.pulsepoint.org or join the conversation at www.facebook.com/PulsePoint and @PulsePoint.

About Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center, Long Beach
Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center is a 389-bed acute care nonprofit hospital that offers a full range of inpatient, outpatient and related health and wellness services to the greater Long Beach area. With more than 600 physicians and 1,350 employees, St. Mary is committed to providing a unique balance of high-quality, compassionate care, personal attention and leading-edge medical technology that brings both healing and humanity to the body, mind and spirit of our patients and the communities we serve.  St. Mary was founded by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in 1923, and is mission-driven not only to deliver care to the sick, but also to provide direct services to the poor and underserved and advocate on their behalf. For more information, please visit us at www.stmarymedicalcenter.org.