Apple To Encourage Organ Donation With Health App (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Apple announced today that its updated Health app, which will be available as part of iOS 10, will allow people to sign-up to be organ donors. The app will use its Medical ID feature, which has been used in the past to keep track of medical and health information, to include the ability to register as a donor of organs, eyes and tissues. The registrations will be forwarded to the National Donate Life Registry, an organization managed by Donate Life of America. All you need to do is tap the registration button in the Health app to volunteer as an organ donor. That adds your status as a donor to an "emergency information" screen that can appear even when the phone is locked. Tapping another button brings up information on organ donation. The demand for organs greatly exceeds the supply, as more than 120,000 Americans are currently waiting for a transplant -- every 10 minutes a new person is added to that waiting list, according to Apple. The feature is currently available for developers, but will be rolling out to the public in the public beta soon.

Comments

Re:Organ Donation

[ganjadude]

there are a number of reasons, one whether a reasonable fear or not, is that if you are in an accident and cant respond at the moment (but could recover) will the doctors pull the plug to get the organs under the thought that you dying can save 10 other lives?

Re:Organ Donation

[MightyYar]

It's not that nefarious... the complexities of the law are totally lost on hospital staff and they can misunderstand "organ donor" to mean "don't try to save me". Really. My wife works in a hospital and will not become an organ donor. I'm still willing to risk it, but partially because I know she's wise to the game.