back to article Jesus Phone brings the DEAD back to LIFE

When doctors are attempting to save the life of someone who has suffered a heart attack, they do a better job if they use a free iPhone app developed to brief them through procedures and drug dosages, according to a recent trial. "Every year approximately 30,000 people in the UK have an unexpected cardiac arrest in hospital …

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  1. Chris Miller

    But, but, ...

    My local hospital insists that I switch off my mobile phone 'to avoid the risk of interference with sensitive medical equipment'. Not much use saving someone with iResus if you find you've just turned off the life support for the poor schmuck in the next bed.

    1. Lionel Baden

      not quite true now

      Most hospitals dont mind mobile phone technology, unless in intensive care area, and i would say thats more for the peace and quiet. the equipment is pretty resilient.

      What pissed me off the most doctors carried around pagers in hospitals which basically are mobile phones without voice funtion.

      But they have found a new excuse to make us turn our phones off. They are now claiming for "patient privacy" That you might be photographing somebody !!!!

      WTF

      the type of person that would go round photographing patients is not the type of person to be hampered by being asked to turn their phone off.

      This is all down to the rip off phone systems installed and rather stupidly unused.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Mobile phones

        "the type of person that would go round photographing patients is not the type of person to be hampered by being asked to turn their phone off"

        Yes. We have ways and means of dealing with anti-social folk like this. Trust me on this.

        I do not know what it is like where you have been but mobile phones to be honest are more of a disturbance to the peace and quiet than anything else but the photography issue is of course also an area of concern.

        From my point of view, basically it's like this.

        If you're reasonable about your phone use and have been reasonably courteous and civil, I would usually turn a blind eye unless you're really close to certain areas, for the aforementioned reasons.

        Usually these folk actually ask for permission to use their phone, and usually they get a yes from me dependent on the situation. If I need to move them, I usually tell them where they can go and stand and all is well.

        If you're some nasty rude prick, however, you will be asked to turn it off.

        I usually do not ask a second time.

        Moral of the story: You come into a hospital, you don't disrespect the place or the people there.

        Oh, and by the way, I think most doctors are usually more pissed off than you are, about having to carry pagers. This is beside the point, but old style pagers as you know, only receive, they do not transmit. There are new VOIP devices however, that are necessarily wifi devices, of course.

      2. kwikbreaks

        Privacy..

        Ah yes privacy - it was the fact that you could see patients in the background that caused raised eyebrows when a nurse at my local hospital got her jugs out on nightshift for a facebook picture - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3358681/Facebook-ban-for-nurses-after-online-flashing.html

        Yes indeedy patient privacy is very important. Getting bedpans to them before they shit the bed while the nurses flash their titties apparently isn't.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "There's no Android or Windows Phone version, however."

    What about a BlackBerry version? Or does that not count as a smartphone now?

  3. Cameron Colley
    FAIL

    I hope you're getting a few quid from Apple, fucktards?

    Why didn't they develop a simple web app able to work on any smart phone? Or, at least, develop it for Android so that doctors aren't seen a negligent for not spending more money on a device only available from one vendor.

    I can understand, to some extent at least*, making your money from selling iDevice apps -- I'm sure people pay more and "apps" may be "cooler" on an iPhone than other platforms, and web pages are generally not chargeable. But to develop a free life-saving app on a vendor-locked platform is just plain stupid.

    *I wouldn't like to be at the mercy of Apple, but I suppose the trade-off must be worth it, and the developer tools may be very good.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You make it then

      1) The web doesn't always work, hardly something you'd want to use when resuscitating people

      2) iOS simply has a mind-blowing greater number of medical apps already, some even FDA approved for medical diagnostic! There is simply no better platform for medical doctors.

      1. Cameron Colley

        I would, but I'm not a developer trying to sell iPhones.

        So, you'd advocate people designing cheap, easy, specialised mobile medical scanners which only work when attached to a Ferrari would you?

        Developing a free app for the iPhone only is marketing for Apple and nothing more. Forcing doctors to either buy a product from one vendor or be seen as somehow not caring for patients is completely unacceptable.

        Should every NHS/Free Clinic/Paramedic/Red Cross doctor shell out £500 quid for an iPhone now?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Medical scanners? Ferraris? What silliness.

          There's no one forcing doctors into buying anything. Just more companies have chosen Apple's platform for their medical products so you'd be very limited if you went elsewhere.

          Developing applications takes time (and money, even on Android) so it only makes sense these people went to the platform with more relevant (ie medical) users.

          I think many NHS/Red cross/etc doctors can afford an iPhone and will already have one, and if not an iPod Touch is just as good for the purpose of this app.

        2. Chad H.
          FAIL

          @ Cameron

          So you'd prefer them use a web app that may not work as you in and out of Wifi/Cell coverage in the big building with big thick walls and wireless intererence-generating machines?

          Doctors aren't forced to use this app... They're welcome to follow their training, or a guide on dead tree, or shock horror, make their own damn app.

          1. Captain DaFt
            Thumb Down

            Actually...

            I'd prefer personnel properly trained and tested on how to respond to emergency situations, and not have to trust my life to some numpty that needs to follow a cheat sheet in a crisis!

  4. Steen Hive
    Joke

    Hmm

    What if you'd rather die than be seen with an iFåne?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Steen

      Just get yourself one of those little necklaces that say so. Everyone's happy then.

  5. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

    20cc of Adrenaline

    Blimey!

  6. Charles E

    My iPhone turned me into a newt!

    I got better.

  7. The Fuzzy Wotnot
    Happy

    Couldn't resist!

    "You're iResus positive!"

    "iResus, they're monkeys aren't they?"

    Sorry Tony, Galton and Simpson!

  8. mike 32
    Thumb Down

    iPhail.

    Piss-poor doctors by the sound of it, losing MIs like that.

    My wife is a casualty doctor (although not an Emergeny Medicine specialist, as it seems to indicate these doctors were) and I can assure you, an iPhone app would be more hindrance than help.

    She has to KNOW the various drugs and doses, and I'm pretty sure her success rate is better than either of those groups. Which includes an MI that would have killed if the guy hadn't been in a casualty bed already.

    Marketing for apple at it's worst. Such an app should be on any smart phone, available to GPs and others suitably qualified.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      3 things.

      1) Your wife is absolutely 110% correct. But in fairness, consider her field.

      2) The authors of their iApp thingy are clearly blowing their trumpets which is deplorable I think but perhaps a little manual for the unfamiliar on how to resuscitate someone is better than none. Personally I think if you need a manual, you're probably screwed anyhow.

      What they should have done is compared 2 groups of psychiatrists*, one group with their ithingy advantage and one without.... Now that would be an interesting study on how truly useful their thingy is.

      (* Or any other specialty not frequently involved in crit care / resuscitation)

      3) It is not clear exactly from the first paragraph of the original article what was meant there by 'heart attack', but *PLEASE NOTE* a heart attack (or as you state in your post an MI) does not necessarily a cardiac arrest make, as the rest of the article subsequently concentrates on and implies ie "Jesus Phone brings the DEAD back to LIFE"

      A cardiac arrest is essentially the endpoint for a lot of whole host of things, some of which are pretty much hopeless to even try to resuscitate. Ie blunt trauma/RTA. This is a very important distinction.

      In fact, you will find most cardiac arrests that make it to hospital are frequently not caused immediately by an acute myocardial infarct.

  9. Adrian Challinor
    FAIL

    So much for training

    I would have hoped that a doctor in A&E would have a fair idea of Resuscitation from Medical 101 and not have to resort to phone app to help.

  10. D. M
    WTF?

    If the doc doesn't know what she/he is doing

    And iPhans trust those toys to save their life?

    I'm with mike 32, a REAL doctor should know this sort of thing before they can try on real people, not some clueless iDiots who has to follow instruction on any phone they carry.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      As the article states

      "REAL" doctors do know this, however if their information is more up to date with research, which they can follow up and apply using this app, they perform better.

      Shocking concept I know as in your world clearly doctors are emotionless robotic humanoids with no lives and thus able to work 12 hours a day and keep up with research during the other 12.

  11. Identity
    Coat

    Irrelevantly...

    <i>"these fanboi and fangirl medics were split equally between the two groups."</i>

    To keep up the insulting tone, shouldn't that be 'fangrrl" or "fangurl?"

  12. Chad H.

    Not to be confused...

    Not to be confused with iRhesus, which would only help if you were trying to bring a monkey back from the brink.

  13. K. Adams
    Headmaster

    App's named wrong...

    iLazarus?

  14. J 3
    Headmaster

    Interesting, but...

    Very low N in the statistics there, so are the differences really significant?

  15. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Not in America...

    The "doctors" here can barely use newfangled technology like X-rays...

  16. LaeMing

    Don't know about doctors

    but the portable rescuscitator we have in the medical kit here talks you through how to use it. Obviously it isn't instructing on drug dosages, just where and how to attach the electrodes, and timing the CPR appropriately for how many people are assisting. It is just to keep the patient ticking over until the medicos arrive. Not something you habitually carry about in your purse, though.

  17. Tom 38
    FAIL

    Too right Cameron

    Those fucktard doctors, trying to make sure that their colleagues don't fuck up a resusc, what absolute scum of the earth wankers.

    Course, if they'd done an Android version, they would be the saviours of humanity.

    WHERES THE MEEGO VERSION YOU OVERPRICED BARBERS?QQ!!

    Btw, everyone claiming that 'the doctors should know all this stuff already'. Well, sure, certain doctors. In general though, lots of doctors simply don't deal with this stuff on a day to day basis. I'd much prefer that if I had a heart attack in Dermatology, or Endocrinology, that my doc, who did not specialize in acute or trauma medicine, got the dose right, rather then fucking it up.

    I also prefer it when they spend their time being experts on in their specialty rather than boning up on stuff they don't do.

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