iOS Only Kills - Open Data Saves Lives

A slightly tongue-in-cheek title for quite a serious subject.

The South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust have a list of emergency defibrillators available for public use. To help raise awareness, they've released an app...

South Central Ambulance Service

@SCAS999

Our new app, which locates over 600 AEDs, could help you save the life of a person suffering sudden cardiac arrest. ow.ly/qMX4W

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Of course, it's iPhone and iPad only. Who cares if Android, BlackBerry, or Windows users want to save a life, right?

Rather than doing anything constructive with my day, I snarked on Twitter.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

iOS only! Why not mobile web?
MT @SCAS999: Our new app could help save the life of a person suffering cardiac arrest ow.ly/qMX4W

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South Central Ambulance Service

@SCAS999

Replying to @edent@edent We'd love a mobile web version. Are you able to help? The app was done for free! Google link here ow.ly/qOj6Q

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Well, how hard can it be to plot points on a map? So, I threw myself into the challenge over my lunch break. Turns out, it's really easy.

Getting the Data

The NHS provided me with a link to a Google map:

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?authuser=0&vps=5&ie=UTF8
&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&output=kml
&msid=213551442652291377405.0004daf3ca79fc04df02e

It's really easy to get Google Maps to spit out KML. All you really need is the msid:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&vps=1&jsv=280a
&msa=0&output=kml
&msid=213551442652291377405.0004daf3ca79fc04df02e

Hey presto - one KML file.

Drawing The Map

Google Maps is so passée - and hides some fairly nasty gotchas - so I used OpenStreetMap. I find that OpenLayers is the easiest way of making OpenStreetMap look beautiful on mobile - and it natively supports KML imports.

Finding Oneself

A user, presumably, wants to find the closest AED to where she is right now - so I wanted to geolocate the user's phone. The OpenLayers geolocation code was a bit to complex for a very quick hack, so I just went with

navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(position) {
var lonLat = new OpenLayers.LonLat(position.coords.longitude,
                                   position.coords.latitude)
             .transform(
                new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:4326"), //transform from WGS 1984
                map.getProjectionObject() //to Spherical Mercator Projection
             );
   map.setCenter(lonLat, 15 // Zoom level - Not too far in, or the user may not see what's going on.
   );
});

Feedback

One satisfied customer :-)

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @SCAS999@SCAS999 you can view the mobile web demo on your phone at xmts.mobi/aed/ and I've put the source code up at github.com/edent/aed

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South Central Ambulance Service

@SCAS999

Replying to @edent@edent Oh my gosh!!! We are all so grateful. I'll arrange with out IT guys to load it on our server, then we'll put a mobile site re-direct

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TVP Chiltern&S.Bucks

@TVP_ChiltSBucks

Replying to @edent@edent Good 2 see u helping out the emergency services!- Think of how many lives you may save, just by taking time out to help the 999 guys!

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Open Data + Open Source = Big Win For Society

Improvements

This was a quick hack, to be worked on by others with more free time. Here are some things which need changing.

• The KML file is static - ideally it should be loaded dynamically from a canonical source.
• Geolocation doesn't track the user. Ideally she should see if she's getting closer to an AED.
• Pins could do with being bigger, and perhaps a different colour.
• Needs links to official sources so the user can trust it.
• Needs an icon so the user can install it to the screen of her phone.
• Potential to use HTML5 to cache the KML file for offline use.

If you want to play around with the code - it is available on GitHub.