Rusty's Blog

ICE – In Case of Emergency. – It may save your life.

I presume it’s available for the iPhone, but don’t know. I hope it’s available for Symbian based and Nokia phones in general, but I wouldn’t know how to confirm it’s available. I use the G1 Android phone, and can confirm that it’s a very functional and useable application, and interfaces with the portions of the system that I want it to.

First of all, what is the application? A few years ago you may have seen a flyer in your electric bill, or with your cell phone bill, suggesting that you add a cell phone contact named ICE. The intent is that if you are in an accident, or incapacitated, or the like that public safety people who encounter you in that condition can check your phone for the ICE contact, and call the person (or people) you designate there to let someone know about your situation. Presumably you have informed that person of any medical conditions that apply to you. That way the people responding to your situation will have additional information available sooner.

It’s a good idea, with a rather critical flaw. The major flaw is that many people do not want to leave their phone available for just anyone to place calls. Additionally with the amount of personal data that you may be keeping on your phone, including your browsing history and such, a large number of people have put screen locks on their cell phone. You can accept calls, and in many cases place something like a 911 call, but general phone numbers are out, and it’s almost a given that an ICE contact would not be available.

ICE – In Case of Emergency, the application does more than just provide a contact. First up you have an instructions page. You can also set up special instructions of your own on the page. There is a row of buttons down the left that read “Who to Call”, “ID & Insurance”, “Allergies”, “Conditions”, and “Medication”.

Within the application the ‘who to call’ contacts are directly callable. You press the contact, and the phone calls them. Pretty much the same way that any contact you set up in your phone is expected to work. However the application only lists those you want to consider your emergency contacts.

ID & Insurance is pretty self explanatory. who are you, where do you live, what is your health insurance numbers in case that will speed up medical assistance. Some hospitals won’t accept you without insurance. Som have to bill differently. You get the picture.

Allergies. If you are alergic to Bee stings or peanuts, this is where you add that information. Want people to know your alergic to asprin? Might be a good idea. Anephelactic Shock is not something you want to go through if at all possible to avoid.

Conditions. Are you diabetic? Have High Blood Preasure? Do you suffer from a specific sleep disorder, or have fragile bones due to osteoperosis? Note all that applies here. Someone going into insulin shock looks a lot like someone having a stroke, or any of a large number of other conditions. Many times seconds matter in getting the appropriate treatment. And knowing what you do know is already wrong with you will make a difference in how medics will try to treat you.

Medications. Again what you take, dossage, schedule if it’s multiple times a day, or once a day, when. It matters, and can make a difference with treatment. My own advice is to also add any herbal remedies you may be taking that are not ‘prescribed.’ If you are taking St. Johns Wart, that will affect some medication in surprising ways.

Note that there are quite a few places to record things that perhaps the developers hadn’t thought of. If you are a vegitarian, or vegan, note that in special instructions on the first page, and possibly in your ID block. If you have been a vegan long enough that you have adverse reactions to something like bacon bits accidentally added to your salad, it might be a good idea to add that information to your allergies.

I’m also inclined to suggest recording ‘lifestyle’ information if you think it might make a difference in what sort of treatment you might get. As an example, if you are a runner, you may have a higher risk of being hit by a car when you are some distance from home, or even when you are ‘almost home’ and SSS hits. SSS is Sudden Stupid Syndrome. Signs include suddenly not paying attention to what’s going on around you, having a sense of elation, and so on. If you look at the record for people driving long distances for commuting or even on a vacation, most ‘accidents’ happen within 5 miles of getting ‘home’. That’s because you’re almost home. You could drive this portion of the trip almost in your sleep. In fact that’s often what you’ve started doing. Oh, you’re awake, but you’re probably paying attention to a different set of things than you were when you were driving the freeway in an unfamiliar state or driving through those towns on old route 66. As a result you miss seeing the unusually large pot hole that opened up in the road last night and rips a tire off your car. Or you miss the kid down the street who just got his permit this week and is trying to show off to mom or dad just how good of a driver he can be. It happens to runners to. You’ve run for 20 min, or so, you’re just about home. You might even be in your warm down walk. Whatever. You’re not paying attention any more, and as you cross the final street, you miss the fact that you’re walking out infront of a bus that’s getting ready to go.

Running does do a few different things to your body as well. If you’ve started long distance running, you may have experienced a runners high. It’s a release of Dopamine into your blood stream. That reduces your sensitivity to pain, and can affect how you process stimulus as well. If you regularly experience that state while running, make sure it’s noted. James Fixx died of a major heart attack during his <a href=”http://bystander.homestead.com/run_heart_attack.html”>daily run</a>. The conditions of the heart attack, and the symptoms that had been happening in the weeks prior to the heart attack suggest that it may have been from before he started running, also there is a history of heart disease in his family. One thing to remember though is that a runners high can mask the symptoms to you, so it might be a good idea to have those conditions documented on the off chance that ambulance personel can respond appropriately.

So back to that major flaw. Many of us prefer to ‘lock’ our phones when we are not actively using it. It may kick in when the screen saver starts, or you may be almost automatically locking the phone, who knows. What ICE can do is hook directly into the screen lock program and if you don’t provide the appropriate password/gesture, the ICE application can come up anyway. That way you can carry the phone with you always, and anyone who needs to contact someone for you, can.

The application comes from <a href=”http://www.appventive.com/”>Appventive.</a> It’s in the Android Marketplace and I think it’s well worth the $0.99 they are asking.

Note that I’ve had the app for almost 3 months. It took me 2 months to figure out how to enable the screen lock access to the application. So if you are having trouble, take heart. You are not alone. Go into Settings on the first page, and go into the dialogs for setting up a delay for the screen lock. That’s where you enable the ICE lock which will allow you to set the phone to display that by default, and you can hit the unlock button there, or you can set a delay to allow you to unlock the phone, or if you don’t successfully unlock the phone the ICE lock comes up which allows the bearer of the phone to place the appropriate calls.

I hope that in the end I never need this application to save my life. However I happen to think that $0.99 is very much a great value for what this app does.