What if you were found unconscious or unable to clearly communicate, suffering from an injury or other medical crisis? It could take an emergency responder or a doctor precious time to figure out two key things: your medical profile and how to get in touch with a family member or friend
Now, a small start-up company called EmergencyLink is trying to improve this situation with a free service that combines digital and physical aids. If you enroll, you can create a detailed profile, including your medical conditions, allergies, medications, insurance information and a list of emergency contacts who can provide more information. This profile is stored online and can be accessed, and updated, via a password-protected website and a companion smartphone app.
In an emergency, the company’s call center can quickly provide an emergency responder with the key medical information you’ve entered online and place the responder in touch with the first of your emergency contacts it can reach.
EmergencyLink iPhone app
To make this work, you receive—also free—a set of stickers, keychain tags, wallet cards and luggage tags, bearing the toll-free number of the service and your account number. It can even create a screensaver for your phone with these numbers. The emergency responder calls the phone number, gives the service the account number and gets access to the medical details and the contact.
To make sure you and your family members and friends, have all the information you need about each other, you can optionally share your information to each others’ accounts on EmergencyLink. You can enroll, or learn more, atemergencylink.com.
EmergencyLink isn’t the first or only product designed to aid people in emergencies. GreatCall sells an emergency-alert device backed by a phone service. And there are numerous sites and apps that allow you to store medical information. But EmergencyLink