Adding Contact Information to All Family Members’ Cell Phones

The Richmond (Virginia) Ambulance Authority requests area residents to input "In Case of Emergency" (ICE) contact entries into all family members’ cell phones – theirs, their children’s, even their elderly parents’ – to help emergency responders in the event of an accident or incident involving the phone’s owner. 

Th authority's chief operating officer got the idea from a paramedic in the East Anglian (United Kingdom) Ambulance Service, who had started the ICE initiative in his response area in 2005 after years of discouraging efforts in trying to quickly reach relatives of people he was treating.

The ambulance authority recommends listing two to four ICE contacts per cell phone.  The following are examples of information to input, as recommended by the ambulance authority:

For adult’s phone:
ICE: Name (husband)
         Contact numbers: cell, work, home

ICE: Name (friend)
        Contact numbers:

For child’s phone:
ICE: Dad (First and last name)
        Contact numbers:

For elderly parent’s phone:
ICE: Daughter (First and last name)
        Contact numbers:

ICE: Name (Caregiver)
        Contact numbers:

An ICE contact or a smart-phone app can provide life-saving medical information about the patient such as medical history, previous medical conditions, allergies, and prescription medications the patient may be on at the time of injury.  It also helps family members and/or friends to be promptly notified of the patient’s involvement in an emergency.

(Statistics show that more than 80% of the U.S. population owned cell phones as of 2007.  According to a Pew Internet Study, as of September 2009, 75 % of children in the 12-17 age group owned cell phones.  That is up from 45% when the study first began in 2004.)

Related news report:

     WWBT: ICE up your cell phone

For more information:

     ICE Your Phone™ Campaign

     Wikipedia: In case of emergency