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PulsePoint, the app developed by the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection district to help save victims of sudden cardiac arrest, is spreading both locally and across the country.

The app, which is available for both iPhones and Android phones, is now available in Alameda County, according to SRVFPD Chief Richard Price. The application sends out an alert to call nearby good Samaritans to help out when an emergency call is made to rescuers. Those Samaritans can do CPR or work an automated external defibrillator(AED).

Price said Alameda County has done a "soft launch" of the program, making it available but not doing an official announcement until Sept. 6.

PulsePoint was already online in Pleasanton, Livermore, Fremont and Alameda, and through all Alameda County Fire agencies. Contra Costa County, Santa Clara County and San Jose are "currently under development" and may be up and running in the next 30 days.

Beyond that, Price said the app has gone international, with a move to make it available in Toronto, Canada, "moving along."

"Across the country we have a whole bunch of them in the works, one in Kentucky, near Cincinnati," he said. " L.A. city and L.A. county, they're in the works right now."

It's already up and running in Columbus, Ohio and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

That means anyone -- even someone from out of state who may happen to be nearby when the alert goes out -- can get the call to help save a life.

Price said PulsePoint makes its technology available free of charge for any municipality that wants to use it.

While programmers are working on making the app work in "complicated environments" like those of Philadelphia and Chicago, PulsePoint has been given a grant to see how well it works.

"We've been funded for a three-year clinical trial by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada on the effectiveness of the app," Price said. "There's a complete research team that's put together all the parameters."

Those who have the app who've received a call -- as was the case recently with San Ramon Mayor Bill Clarkson -- will be asked a short survey.

"It's a two or three minute survey, it's going to give us a lot of feedback," Price said. "We're not always sure who arrived and what they did. We'll know CPR was done, but we don't know if they were there because of the app.

Price said the app has been activated about 100 times, and usually gets around a dozen responders.

"For example, we had an incident at Peet's in downtown Danville," he said. "In that particular case, we had CPR responders, people out front directing rescue workers in, others to switch out doing CPR, people clapping to 100 times a minute. What we don't know is if the people in Peet's would have responded anyway. We'd like to know -- when 10 people are activated, do we get two or eight?"

In some rural areas where emergency response times are lengthy, PulsePoint has been asked to make the alerts go out to a larger area. Radiuses are also being fine tuned to see how many people will say they didn't go because the call was too far away.

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