Project seeks to publicize life-saving defibrillators

Around the country, portable devices that can diagnose and treat life-threatening heart rhythms have been installed in shopping malls, arenas, offices, gyms, schools, and other public places.

These automated external defibrillators (AEDs) have step-by-step audio instructions, so even an untrained bystander can become a lifesaver.

Unless, of course, no one can find an AED when it's needed.

Next month, University of Pennsylvania researchers will launch a project aimed at averting that horrifying situation.

The first step will be a monthlong contest in which participants will hunt down AEDs, then use their smartphones to transmit photos and locations to the researchers. As an incentive, the grand prize for finding the most AEDs will be $10,000.

"We guess there are 5,000 AEDs in Philadelphia," said Penn emergency physician Raina Merchant, who is leading the project, called MyHeartMap Challenge. "Some are easy to find, some not. So it's quite a task."

The second step will be creating an interactive AED registry. It will become part of the city's 911 call system and be accessible through a smartphone application that is being developed.

"That will put the lifesaving devices in the hands of anyone, anywhere, anytime," declare the project's leaders.

MyHeartMap is part of broad efforts to improve the safety and effectiveness of public-access defibrillators.

Along with the chest compressions of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, defibrillation is a vital step in responding to cardiac arrest. More than 300,000 Americans a year suffer the sudden heart stoppage, often because of a deadly arrhythmia. Only about 6 percent of them survive because the window of time for preventing catastrophic brain damage is about four to six minutes.

Public access to AEDs has improved survival, saving an estimated 500 lives a year. But quality control and oversight of the devices are variable.

Ideally, a medical professional makes sure that AEDs are properly maintained and that personnel are taught to use them; airports typically have such programs. Other AED programs, however, may involve little more than getting a doctor's order for the device and raising $1,500 to $2,000 to buy it - as Penn interventional cardiologist John W. Hirshfeld discovered.