The Cue Card Emergency Medical Aid

Stanford University, 1999 - $20,000

Observations and published studies reveal that retention of emergency first aid and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) skills is difficult. When these skills are not regularly used, both lay people and highly trained professionals (police, nurses and doctors) lose the ability to give adequate care within three months after training. This E-Team team developed a device that gives audio prompts to a rescuer, coaching a standard lifesaving algorithm. The device is about the size of a credit card and inexpensive to produce.

The team first started work on this idea in an advanced product design course called Needfinding. They found a common lack of confidence amongst survey respondents in being able to retain CPR training. The two students on the team were graduate students in product design, and they were assisted by a faculty advisor in product design and several industry advisors with experience in the medical industry, business development, and product design.