When someone has a medical or traumatic event that affects his or her ability to breathe or heart to function, seconds count. Paramedic response times varies around  Central Goldfields Victoria (from minutes, to over an hour!). Maryborough has some of the fastest times with 50% of immediate life threatening incidents beings responded to within 13 minutes; but even 13 minutes could be too late in such circumstances.

Basic life support while awaiting the emergency services saves lives ! There are thousands of “Good Samaritans” around the world with these life saving skills – there might be someone less than a few hundred feet from you now who could help – if only they knew that help was needed. That’s where the GoodSAM App comes in … download the GoodSAM Alerter from your App Store or Google Play now and register. The GoodSAM Alerter can be used right across Australia and even while overseas.

Through the GoodSAM Smartphone app, trained first responders (who may be off duty) including doctors, nurses, firefighters, paramedics, medics, police officers and medical students can register to be alerted to incidents in their surrounding area and could be on scene within minutes. With a built-in Defibrilocator function, app users can also easily identify registered public access defibrillators.

Tom Aczel of Emergency Medical Response said: “GoodSAM is set to revolutionise our ability to get help immediately to a patient and improve outcomes. Harnessing the community for the benefit of the community. Effectively what the app does is enable someone to shout for help, really loudly – even through walls – so a responder in the car wash will know that the man in the coffee shop next door is having a cardiac arrest.

“Opening an airway and administering basic life support can save lives if done quickly enough and all around us are people who have these life-saving skills that could be put to good use in an emergency. These Good Samaritans can provide vital assistance until such time as the emergency services arrive on scene. GoodSAM automatically alerts the three nearest responders to the emergency.”