There’s an app for everything these days, ranging from rideshares to food deliveries and even anonymous social networking. Now, a Santa Monica resident will build, in his words, the Uber of CPR.
Matt Wolf, the founder and owner of the CPR SAVE app, wants to crowdsource certified CPR professionals and have them on call via the app to save people’s lives faster. Wolf started the app after several incidents in his own life that involved a cardiac arrest, making the creation of the app personal.
At age nine, Wolf’s father died from a cardiac arrest. Two decades later, his stepfather also died from cardiac arrest. The incident that eventually spurred the app’s creation occurred three years ago. During a basketball game at memorial park, one of Wolf’s friends suddenly collapsed facedown.
“We thought he passed out from the heat or had a seizure,” Wolf said. “We discovered he was in cardiac arrest. He was unresponsive so we took him to the hospital. He was in a coma for three days and ended up recovering. The same guy, maybe seven months later, went into cardiac arrest again. I gave him CPR and he recovered. We just celebrated his 60th birthday, but that incident is what gave me the idea.”
Much like Uber, the app would connect riders to drivers, the twist being these drivers are CPR certified.
“You push the button, press ‘help’ and you crowdsource anyone in our network,” Wolf said. “The nearest person gets a call—let’s say, there are three people nearby—all these people get a call, text and link to mapping software that would open up and route them to a victim’s location.”
The app is currently in beta with a target launch date of August 24. Wolf has had a positive relationship with the city and his app, noting he’s working with the city’s Community Emergency Response Team. Roughly 400 from this team will assist in cardiac arrest calls.
As of now, there’s no cost for the app. Wolf says when commercialization eventually comes knocking that the prices will be covered by insurance companies.
Wolf hopes that once the app is launched that the city will integrate the app with 911, sending a ping to people within the CPR SAVE app network. This would give people suffering from a cardiac arrest a two-prong method of survival; the ambulance would be on its way and nearby CPR trained citizens will be heading the same direction.
“Why can we get a pizza or Uber when we need it but not CPR,” Wolf said. “315,000 Americans every year from cardiac failure. Hopefully, this will save some of those lives.”
For more information, visit https://www.cprsaveapp.com/
angel@smdp.com
