Best First Aid Apps for iPhone and iPod Touch - How a First Aid App Could Save Your Life
Emergency Preparedness
You can do an incredible amount of cool stuff with your iPhone, and it’s not just for sending messages or playing games. In fact, a $3.99 iPhone app was recently used to save a man’s life in Haiti after he got trapped in a building that collapsed during the earthquake. Think about that for a moment and you’ll realize the incredible potential for portable applications. Here’s a look at some of the best First Aid apps for the iPhone and how they may be worth the investment since you never know when you might need one. A couple of them are even free!
Pocket First Aid & CPR
Pocket First Aid & CPR is the app used by an American named Dan Wholley who was in Haiti during the earthquake and suddenly found himself trapped under six floors of rubble. By following the advice of this $3.99 app, he was able to stop the bleeding he had from some life-threatening injuries, then he used the iPhone alarm to keep himself from falling asleep after the app told him of the dangers of sleeping with his injuries. He wasn’t rescued until several days later, so there’s no question that this app saved his life. This app was put out by the American Heart Association and even features some videos to demonstrate what to do in case of an emergency.
You can read Dan Wholley’s full story here. For more information, check out the publisher’s website.
Army First Aid
There’s first aid and then there’s military first aid, and that’s just what this $1.99 app provides – a copy of the U.S. Army First Aid Manual. It features over 600 pages of information that teaches how to treat people in shock, stop bleeding, deal with animal bites, and more. It features detailed instructions and illustrations, and is also searchable. For the price, you couldn’t buy an actual book with this much information. This would be great for someone who spends a lot of time outdoors, especially for hunters and hikers.
For more information, check out the publisher’s website.
WebMD Mobile
WebMD Mobile is a free app that is basically just a front-end for the WebMD.com website. It is totally free, just like the site, so it is worthy of mention here although it’s overall user rating is fairly average. The main feature of this app is a symptom checker that lets you go through a list of problems you might be experiencing and then it will return some possible causes for your troubles. As always, this information could be taken with a grain of salt since one symptom can be the result of a wide variety of problems. It is always better to see a real doctor than to try and diagnose yourself, but this app does provide some helpful information.
For more information, visit WebMD.com.
PocketCPR
PocketCPR is a free app that teaches you how to perform CPR. Although it has not been approved by the FDA for certification purposes, it is still a great tool for learning and practicing CPR. Not only does it give you written instructions and visual aids, but it actually uses the iPhone’s motion sensing capabilities to test your CPR method of chest compression. To be that detailed and still be totally free is amazing to me, and you just never know when you might have to perform CPR on someone.
For more information, visit the publisher’s website.
Pet First Aid
Sometimes your pets need help, too. Pet First Aid is an app from the makers of Pocket First Aid & CPR and it uses the same type of interface to cover dozens of situations that include bleeding, poisons, how to muzzle a dog, and more. It also lets you create pet profiles to save medical information about your pets, which is a great resource in case you are in an emergency and need to take your pet to a vet who has never seen them before. This $3.99 app was designed mainly for dog and cat owners.
For more information, check out the publisher’s website.
