Want to be a superhero? To save a life? It is now possible and above all accessible to everyone. To help you, you can count on the device Geoheart. The principle ? Bring a defibrillator to the scene of a heart attack before help arrives and thus double the victim’s chances of survival.
“We always talk about road accidents which cause more than 3,000 deaths each year, but few of the 50,000 deaths due to cardiac arrest despite the 500,000 AEDs [défibrillateurs automatisés externes] installed almost everywhere in the territory”, notes Frédéric Leybold, intensive care nurse, firefighter but also president of the French Association of First Responders. So he put on a new hat: that of creator of Géocœur.
Every minute counts
Because there is an emergency. “Every minute counts in the event of a heart attack and an extra minute gives you an additional chance of survival. Hence the interest of this device. We are not sending someone to get a defibrillator, but we are going to allow a person who is near a defibrillator to bring it,” explains Frédéric Leybold. Concretely, the Géocœur is a connected panel, installed next to the defibrillator and connected to the emergency services.
It is put on sound and light alert when the emergency services report that there is a cardiac arrest near the AED. A message resonates: “Cardiac arrest nearby, we need the defibrillator, scan the QR code to find the address. » For the record, the voice used is that of Doctor Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) in the series Grey’s Anatomy…
“So all it takes is for one person to approach,” continues Frédéric Leybold. No need for registration, no application, nothing. The person flashes the QR code and comes across a page which will give them the distance to the location. If she accepts, the address of the cardiac arrest appears with a direct indication on the GPS of her phone. She takes the defibrillator and takes him away. She can just do the “taxi” if she wants, but using an AED is extremely simple and explained. »
Very often confronted with cardiac arrests in his profession as a nurse, the creator of Géocœur noted that very few victims are lucky enough to benefit from a defibrillator before help arrives. And this, even if establishments open to the public have been equipped with them since a 2018 law.
Our file on heart attacks
His idea appeals. The first alert systems were installed in July 2023, mainly by communities in the Grand-Est, notably the Moselle department or by the Paris town hall, and Géocœur was rewarded with the President of the Republic prize in the competition Lépine 2022. Thirty interventions have already been carried out via this system. “Which is already good considering the only 250 boxes deployed,” underlines Frédéric Leybold.
Three hundred other installations are planned or in progress by the end of 2024 in Saint-Tropez, Toulouse, Haute-Savoie, and Normandy. Enough to give hope when we know that the majority of heart attacks could be without consequences when the first aid measures arrive on time.