Clearly, cell phones are critical lifelines in times of trouble. If you have a cell phone with you when you break down late at night, help is a call away. We can all remember times when the handy cell phone allowed us to make a critical link to someone who needed to know—immediately. But what if you are unable to use the phone?
In an accident, for example, you may be unconscious. Emergency personnel can check your phone, but usually there is no way to know which of the dozens of numbers you may have saved belong to your spouse, children, other family members or closest friends—the very persons you would want contacted first in case of emergency.
For first responders who may be facing life-and-death decisions, it’s no small problem. A paramedic in Britain named Bob Brotchie has come up with a simple and effective solution, and the idea is spreading rapidly abroad and here in the United States. Cell phone owners are asked to put a simple three-letter code—ICE for “in case of emergency”— in front of key contacts. If a paramedic found ICE-Janet among the saved numbers, they would be able to eliminate trial and error and save valuable time when every minute counts. In case of multiple contacts, the procedure would be as simple as “ICE1, ICE2” and so on.
This may be a better plan than using “Dad” or “Mom” since these may connect someone to elderly parents. And if they are hard of hearing, suffer from dementia or are in ill health, they are clearly not an appropriate contact during an emergency.
A police official in Madison, CT, thinks ICE is a great idea. “It’s so simple,” says Lt. Robert Stimpson. “I can’t believe that other people haven’t thought of it before. Not only does it help emergency workers identify a responsible party when they come upon an unconscious person, it also helps identify the owners of lost cell phones.”
The importance of medical personnel being able to contact next of kin is vitally important. Consider this as an example. After the 9-11-01 attacks, the nonprofit National Next of Kin Registry was established. The service was the creation of a disabled former Marine, Mark Cerney, who pointed out that in a recent year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported nearly one million patients in emergency rooms could not identify contacts because they had become incapacitated.
The ICE plan is free. It’s simple and can be implemented in seconds. Just imagine the potential if all of the nearly 200 million cell users in the U.S. alone adopted the simple plan. Of course, the plan is not without possible drawbacks. Privacy may be a concern for some, and there is always the potential that the information will be out of date, etc. But all in all, it seems like an idea with a potential for good that far outweighs its possible disadvantages. (This post was prepared, in part, with material appearing in an online Washington Post article.)
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