Free phone app helped doctors perform better in simulated cardiac emergency (UK)

Doctors who used a free iPhone application provided by the UK Resuscitation Council performed significantly better in a simulated medical emergency than those who did not, according to a study in the April issue of Anaesthesia. "Every year approximately 30,000 people in the UK have an unexpected cardiac arrest in hospital and, despite significant advances in resuscitation research, survival rates for adults suffering a cardiac arrest remain poor" says Dr Daniel Low, the consultant anaesthetist who developed the application. "More than 60,000 free copies of the iResus application have already been downloaded and a healthcare professional recently told us that they had used it when they were involved in an out-of-hospital paediatric emergency. Being able to refer to paediatric drug doses they were unfamiliar with helped them to save a child's life."