The association “Region der Lebensretter” is happy about the networking of its project with numerous districts this Thursday.
A man goes into cardiac arrest and collapses alone in his apartment. A floor above him, a nurse is making a house call and could resuscitate the patient until the ambulance arrives. But she knows nothing of what is happening in the immediate vicinity. The app of the non-profit association “Region der Lebensretter” is intended to prevent such situations. Michael Müller, chief physician at the clinic for anaesthesiology, intensive care and emergency medicine at Freiburg’s Artemed-St. Josefskrankenhaus founded the association four years ago, and 1,228 first responders in Freiburg and in the Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district have already downloaded the app to their smartphones.
The digital project for alerting first responders, which began as a pilot project in Freiburg, will be decisively expanded on Thursday in the presence of Interior Minister Thomas Strobl. 13 out of a total of 34 nationwide control centers in the country will be networked when the Minister of the Interior presses the symbolic red buzzer. With the control centers in Freiburg and the Rems-Murr district, two alarm servers are connected to form an alarm system – they form the digital infrastructure of the application.
But that should only be an intermediate step. If Müller has his way, all control centers in the country should be connected to the system in the near future. He refers to the international guidelines for resuscitation that have been in force since March 2021. Every European country is asked there to use such technologies.
The control centers in Freiburg, Göppingen and Mosbach were initially involved in the pilot phase. Over time, Aalen, Biberach, Heidenheim and Ulm/the Alb-Donau-Kreis as well as Emmendingen, the Ortenaukreis, the Schwarzwald-Baar-Kreis and Mittelbaden were joined by further rescue control centers or districts in the lifeguard region. In other words, many neighboring districts, the merger of which will make it possible to use digital technology to direct available first-aiders to deployment sites across district borders in the future.
However, there are still many white spots on the Baden-Württemberg state map. But Michael Müller is confident that the connection will create a dynamic that will help to close it quickly. And Freiburg and the Black Forest have already made an appearance for international use and the further technological development of the app. More than 40 international experts from twelve countries met just a few weeks ago for a conference in Hinterzarten to set scientific standards.
More than 70,000 people would suffer cardiac arrest in Germany within a year, Müller emphasized the importance of the development. “Resuscitation by trained rescuers, activated via a mobile app, often shortens the time to resuscitation by several minutes,” he estimates. “That could save around 10,000 more people a year.”
And how is the use of the app financed? The “Region der Lebensretter” was founded in 2017 as a non-profit association – by representatives of the city, leading emergency and intensive care physicians as well as those responsible from the DRK and other aid organizations. The association can fulfill its task with the help of donations and grants. “We are also in good talks with both the health insurance companies and the state,” says Müller, who sees Strobl’s visit as a good sign.
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