Every year suffer at least 40. 000 People in Germany experience sudden cardiac arrest outside of a hospital, so completely surprisingly at home, at work or on the go. If someone suddenly collapses on the street, on the bus or at work, help is needed quickly. In such cases, the time is measured in seconds; After three to four minutes without life-saving measures, the victims are threatened with permanent damage.

Everyone who gets a driver’s license learns in the mandatory first aid course on how to perform chest compressions in such an emergency. But the inhibition threshold is high to apply what you have learned in an emergency. The situation of suddenly having to provide first aid is overwhelming for many of those affected, both physically and mentally.

Only around 40 Percent of people therefore start chest compressions when they find an unconscious person, report specialists. But until the rescue service is on site and the professionals start resuscitation and ventilation, it often takes more than the critical three to four minutes to pass, because on average the rescuers need nine minutes to arrive.

In more and more counties, the rescue workers are hoping for smartphone apps that will shorten this time. If an unconscious person is reported by emergency call, the dispatcher in the rescue control center alerts potential first aiders in the area, who can rush to the scene of the accident and provide first aid there until the rescue service arrives.

Large number of apps Such applications have been around for a long time. The pioneer was from 2013 the district of Gütersloh. The initiator there was the neurosurgeon and emergency physician Ralf Stroop, who only noticed when the rescue workers arrived that an emergency had occurred in his immediate neighborhood that he could have helped – if he had found out.

An alarm goes off a first aider has seconds in the Katretter app 000 to confirm his mission.

Over the years, other systems have been added, all of which work on the same principle. In Freiburg, for example, the association “Region der Lebensretter” was founded 2017, which took over an existing system from Denmark and adapted it to its own needs.

Since the districts organize the rescue service individually, there are no standards so far, such systems are far from being used everywhere. The alerting and the selection of potential first aiders run in the districts according to different rules and with different priorities, if there is such an app at all.

The planned accessaries – The Katretter function is already visible in the app, but not yet implemented.

The Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB), for example, focuses its work on a register for publicly accessible Defibrillators that can be accessed by anyone via an app. Only medical specialists or rescue service personnel with current first aid qualifications can register for the ASB system as emergency helpers.

In October of this year, the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (Focus) such an app solution with the name Katretter. The name is based on the institute’s established population warning system Katwarn, which is already in use in numerous rescue control centers.

For the districts that are already using Katwarn, it would be particularly easy to to establish such a solution. Right at the beginning there were Berlin and seven other districts, others 30 are in concrete talks about the introduction, according to Focus or are already making preparations. In the so far only a few locations, there have already been 2000 alarms via the system in 750 cases, rescuers could actually move out. 3000 First aiders are already registered in Berlin.