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Using QR Codes To Save Lives
itwbennett writes "Paramedics in Marin County, California, may soon be putting QR codes to lifesaving use. According to an IDG News Service report, 'Lifesquare, a Silicon Valley start-up, has partnered with two emergency response agencies in Marin County to run a year-long pilot program. Lifesquare wants residents to input personal information about their medications into its website, then place corresponding QR code stickers where emergency responders can scan them with an iPhone.' The first hurdle: Getting people to put the sensitive information online. 'The way that we look at is that people already put their information into their driver's license, that's owned by the government, people put their information into credit card company's and that's owned by private corporations,' said Ryan Chamberlain, director of public outreach at Lifesquare."
4k should be enough to contain most information a paramedic might need (alergies, medication), esp. if that info is app generated (shortcodes, compression). There is absolutly no need to upload al this to an external party to have it downloaded again in an emergency, in effect adding a couple points of failure.
Just put the info in to QR.
It's just a QR code, which is little more than an advanced barcode. I don't see why we feel the need to write stories every time one gets used. It's like reading about paint drying.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
What is this 'with an iPhone' junk again. How about with a smartphone/portable computer etc. Why must everything be Apple, is it just so the sheep understand stuff to or what. Just give them some crayons and let them sit in the corner if it is to complicated for them to parse the word smartphone to include their own little Jobsian idol.
Of course it has. This is just a company going for a cash grab. I'm surprised they aren't using a proprietary 2D barcode format, but that would mean hiring 3x as many developers.
This thing is such a bad idea it shouldn't even have to be enumerated.
1) EMT doesn't have the app.
2) Person is in a reception dead zone. (Soon to literally be a dead zone.)
3) Disaster scenario: What happens to mobile phone reception?
4) Paramedics have time to surfe the web while trying to save lives?
5) LifeSquare's web site is down. Whoops, guess I'll die of a reaction to penicillin then.
Sure, there are privacy issues, but that seems to be the least of the faults with the system. Just write the dam thing in English on the bracelet and all you need to do is be able to read English. Low-tech solution is the right one.
simple != better security against unwanted access.
Yeah, and the information printed right on the sticker provides both at once. I'm pretty baffled as to how a self-contained physical item in your wallet is somehow supposed to be less secure than collecting lots of data points on a net-connected server...
Then everybody with a QR-code reader can get your info. Online database access can at least in theory be restricted to authorized people. Anyway, this whole idea is misguided. Machine readable information that isn't also human readable invariably falls out of sync with reality. Machine codes should only ever be used for things that never change or are scanned so frequently that wrong information can't last. The kind of information they want to put in these codes could just be printed in clear text. This is just one company trying to get into a middle-man position where no middle-man is needed.
Don't know about in the US, but in the UK we have allergy bracelets that lists all allergies that person has for such emergency purposes. Adding a QR code to digitize this information wouldn't be too terrible.
Given the contents of the average wallet, the loss of the QR in your wallet isn't significant.
Learn to love Alaska
The patient link is static and can never change, so a QR is appropriate.
Yes, cause there's no such thing as areas without coverage, network errors, database failures, ...
And in case of large scale emergencies, the cellular network would never fail. NEVER!
I'll take plain text, thank you very much!
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