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Philips Healthcare generates 4,000 downloads of iPad app

Philips Healthcare is aiming to educate consumers on how to perform CPR via an iPad application that has been downloaded approximately 4,000 times.

Philips Healthcare?s HeartStart app was released in October and has seen success to help walk consumers through the steps of the CPR process. Philips worked with agency Garrigan Lyman Group on this initiative.

?The goal of the app is to show consumers how important it is to know how to go through the steps if they ever need to perform CPR on someone,? said Flavia Albuquerque, Bothell, WA-based senior manager of global integrated communications at Philips Healthcare.

Philips is an international electronics company with three focuses ? consumer electronics, lighting and healthcare.

Virtual life-saver
The HeartStart app is available for free in Apple?s App Store.

The app promotes Philip?s line of Automated External Defibrillators products, which monitor a person?s heart rhythm and sends an electronic shock through the heart if it detects a problem.
 
Users can learn about Philip?s three AED products inside the app and watch demos on how the technology works.

Consumers can also use their fingers to interact with a virtual mannequin that shows what an AED does.

Consumers can watch videos that walk them through the process of giving CPR.

Additionally, users can learn about the difference between adult, child and infant CPR.

The app includes a section with commonly-asked questions about CPR. Users can also share information via email inside the app.

?The app puts everything in perspective and shows how a tool like this can help people become educated and in control because cardiac arrest can happen anywhere and at any time,? Ms. Albuquerque said.

Mobile health
Initiatives including the Philips app are signs that as consumers? interact with digital pieces of content, industries such as healthcare are changing.

With the iPad app, Philips is able to tie its products into an educational experience for users.

Additionally, tablets are becoming the go-to device for research purposes, making an iPad app a natural way for a healthcare company to showcase its innovation.

In the Philips case, the app focuses on educating consumers on CPR, which is something many consumers most likely need to be refreshed on.

?Philips wanted to distribute heart health information to consumers, but in order to do it the effort had to be actionable with a real value for consumers,? said Eric Parkinson, director of user experience at Garrigan Lyman Group, Seattle.

?The tablet particularly amplifies the content and is more than just a sales tool for the company,? he said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York