People in the West Midlands urged to become cardiac responders

People across the West Midlands are being empowered to save lives in their local area, to help tackle the number of people dying from cardiac arrests.

The new app is called GoodSAM and is set up to send alerts to people's phone if someone nearby is suffering from a cardiac arrest.

It's designed to provide help before emergency services arrive.

The lifesaving equivalent of neighbourhood watch will offer free CPR training and defibrillation awareness to people living in towns, cities and rural areas, so they can sign up to be cardiac responders.

The training will see members of the public learn essential lifesaving skills via an interactive video game which leads them through several scenarios, requiring them to make crucial decisions and learn the essentials to save a life.

Once people have been trained through RCUK’s lifesaver course, they’ll be able to sign up to GoodSAM as a volunteer cardiac responder, under the lifesavers category, they’ll be notified of a cardiac arrest in their local community – via their phone.

In the UK around 73,000 people suffer an out of hospital cardiac arrest each year, that’s around 200 people every single day.

Sadly, the survival rate is less than 1 in 10, and survival falls by 10% for every minute a patient doesn’t receive CPR or defibrillation.

With 80% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests happening at home and new research suggesting just half (51%) of people would feel confident in responding to a family member suffering a cardiac arrest.

Ambulance services have complete control over who they alert – whether it be their own staff, local police and now lifesaving neighbours. All volunteers go through rigorous background checks including DBS, before being able to attend an emergency.

Professor Gavin Perkins, the Vice-President of Resuscitation Council UK and a Professor of Critical Care Medicine at University Hospitals Birmingham and West Midlands Ambulance Service said: "The really exciting thing is the bystander CPR can make such a difference in the amount of people that will survive to go home from hospital.

"It's absolutely critical, at the moment one in five people wo experience an out of hospital cardiac arrest don't receive support or help until an ambulance arrives.

"This will save so many more lives."