In the wake of the London subway bombings an emergency contact system is gaining popularity, and it''s as easy as hitting a few buttons on your cellphone.
It is called ICE, or "In Case of an Emergency." The idea is simple. Put emergency contacts in your cell phone and label them ICE so emergency personnel can quickly find them.
Mark Levine, MD, is an emergency room physician at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. He is active in spreading the word of this concept in his other role as medical director of the St. Louis Fire Department. He says the idea isn''t new, but picked up attention after rescuers in London weren''t able to identify many patients.
"A working group in London decided to put together a project where individuals put into their cell phones an entry of ICE and then a person''s name to contact and the ICE stood for ''In Case of Emergency,''" says Dr. Levine. "So, in the event that all they were able to do is find a phone, they could scroll down the phone book n the cell phone and find out who to contact in an emergency."
Ordinarily when a patient is unable to communicate, emergency personnel assign a social worker to collect a patient''s wallet for information. The standard is usually to find the patient''s address and cross reference with the phone book. However, Dr. Levine says that doesn''t always work.
"Many times your address has changed, you haven''t updated your license or there may be nobody at home because either somebody''s at work or you don''t live with anybody, so that makes it much more difficult to find somebody whose a next of kin," says Dr. Levine. "I think if we find a cell phone with the patient and we can scroll through it, and it takes 15 or 20 seconds as opposed to a prolonged course of trying to cross reference the address with the phone book."
Dr. Levine says you should add a contact in your address book, and then type in I-C-E followed by the name, and then a number.
"When you put ICE-mom, this isn''t that helpful, you should put ICE-name-mom, so the health care providers in the ER or EMS know who they should be talking to," says Dr. Levine. "Instead of saying ''Hi, I have a phone here, are you a mother?'' we can say ''Hi, are you Margaret, do you know somebody that lives in St. Louis or may have been in some area of town where there may have been an emergency?''"
Over the past couple of weeks, word of the concept has spread quickly through e-mails passed on from person to person. However, Dr. Levine adds there have been hoax e-mail warnings as well. Those messages say entering ICE contacts may trigger premium charges or that malicious text messages or viruses may be sent to phones with ICE entries. According to Dr. Levine and the urban legends website snopes.com, these warnings are hoaxes and no such danger exists.