Excellence in Technology SA Ambulance Service GoodSAM

Responder Integration Program (GRIP)

SA Ambulance Service

Team: Kestrel Blackmore

SA Ambulance Service (SAAS) has joined the global GoodSAM program, which saves lives through people’s natural instinct to help others in a crisis, so as to improve cardiac arrest survival rates. GoodSAM is an alert system that uses a phone app to notify registered responders – like off-duty health professionals and first-aiders – if a cardiac arrest occurs near them. These responders can provide CPR while an ambulance is on the way.

SAAS have also adopted the GoodSAM Automated External Defibrillators (AED) Registry replacing several inhouse registries. This provides details of nearby defibrillators which further improve the chances of surviving a cardiac arrest. The GoodSAM Responder Integration Project (GRIP) team integrated the South Australian Computer Aided Dispatch (SACAD) system with GoodSAM to ensure Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) call takers and dispatchers did not have to change any existing work practices – the system “just worked.”

To date, 3.2% of cardiac arrest events, notified via Triple Zero (000) to SAAS, have had a GoodSAM responder on scene – several before an ambulance arrived. There are ~500 SAAS staff and volunteers registered with this being opened up to all registered health professionals in late March 2023.