On a recent airplane ride, our daughter forgot her cellphone in the lavatory but it was returned to her by the flight attendant who knew how to access the emergency information in the phone, which contained her name. Armed with that information, the FA cross checked her name to find out which row she was seated and then returned the forgotten item that could’ve turned out lost if the FA hadn’t been as helpful and knowledgeable around almost lost mobile phones.
The emergency info feature of a modern smartphone contains information on the owner, such as name, blood type, medical conditions, and emergency contact. The purpose is for rescue workers to be able to have access to that information in case the owner is found unconscious or non-responding. If they can find the phone and match it to the owner, and know how to access the emergency information, which by design is available even if the phone is locked, that information can help them figure out how to treat the patient and apply the correct first aid.
As someone who never needed it, I didn’t even know it existed. But now that I know about it, it is a cool piece of tech that we should know more about.
That situation was the first time I saw the emergency info feature of the smartphone in action, even though that probably wasn’t the primary purpose. However, after that experience, I looked at my own phone and started entering in more information that would come in handy if an emergency responder were to find my phone beside an unconscious me. Aside from my name, my phone’s emergency information now has the blood type and current medications fields filled in. I hope I never get to use it, but in case, for case, the information is already there, waiting for a tech savvy rescuer to find it if I ever get into an accident or lose it in the lavatory during a long haul flight.
This bit of learning, coupled with the news that the younger brother of a dear friend recently suffered a stroke, which happened while he was driving, made me want to share that information.
In the case of my friend, he was fortunate to have a companion in the car who took over the wheel after the crippling headache that suddenly struck forced him off the road. If he didn’t have someone with him, and forced himself to drive home despite his condition, he could’ve gotten into a crash, or he could’ve been able to pull over but somehow lose consciousness. Those are situations where the medical ID on his phone would’ve come in handy.
Of course, that smartphone feature is only useful if both the owner and the first responder know how to use it. I don’t know about the owners, if there is any way to make them enter the information in their phones, but for the first responders it is something they should also know how to access. If a flight attendant knows how to check that information on a phone, so should a rescuer, right? Whether flight attendant or first responder, training is key, and since accessing that critical information is fairly easy, requiring just a swipe and a few taps on a locked smartphone, we can probably be hopeful that most of our first responders have already received some sort of training for it.
As for the users, it doesn’t take five minutes to enter and save that information. For iOS users, it can be done through the baked in Health app. For Android users, there are different applications for it, depending on the manufacturer, but if you take the time to google or read the manual, it should be right there. Something as simple as displaying the owner’s health information on a locked screen shouldn’t be that difficult to implement.
For the well-meaning ones among us who always find lost phones, knowing how to access the medical ID also provides a quick and easy way of finding the owner through their listed emergency contact, usually a loved one of the owner. Additionally, a locked phone should be able to call the listed emergency contact, which saves a lot of the hassle of locating the owner of a lost and found phone by someone who has been raised properly and doesn’t think twice about returning lost property.
If you come to think of it, with all the tech around us, there are so many unknown but useful features around us that can be life changing or life saving. Knowing how these things work, or making the effort to make it useful if ever it will be needed won’t take five minutes. It would serve us well to make the effort to be updated of such useful features that manufacturers and developers come up with every couple of years or so.*
