In Case of Emergency (ICE) is a programme designed to enable first responders, such as

paramedic A paramedic is a registered healthcare professional who works autonomously across a range of health and care settings and may specialise in clinical practice, as well as in education, leadership, and research. Not all ambulance personnel are p ...

firefighter A firefighter is a first responder and rescuer extensively trained in firefighting, primarily to extinguish hazardous fires that threaten life, property, and the environment as well as to rescue people and in some cases or jurisdictions also ...

s, and

police officer A police officer (also called a policeman and, less commonly, a policewoman) is a warranted law employee of a police force. In most countries, "police officer" is a generic term not specifying a particular rank. In some, the use of the ...

s, as well as hospital personnel, to contact the next of kin of the owner of a

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

in order to obtain important medical or support information (the mobile phone must be unlocked and working). The phone entry (or entries) should supplement or complement written (such as wallet, bracelet, or necklace) information or indicators. The programme was conceived in the mid-2000s and promoted by

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

paramedic Bob Brotchie in May 2005. It encourages people to enter emergency contacts in their mobile phone

address book An address book or a name and address book is a book, or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields (for example: first name, last name, company name, address, telephone num ...

under the name 'ICE'. Alternatively, a person can list multiple emergency contacts as 'ICE1', 'ICE2', etc. The programme has been criticised by some emergency responders, and the hoaxbusters site.

Overview

Following research carried out by

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that showed that fewer than 25% of people carry any details of who they would like to be telephoned following a serious accident, a campaign encouraging people to do this was started in May 2005 by Bob Brotchie of the

East of England Ambulance Service The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EEAST) is an NHS trust responsible for providing National Health Service (NHS) ambulance services in the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, in the ...

in the

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. The idea has taken off since the

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. When interviewed on the

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'' programme on 12 July 2005, Brotchie said:

"I was reflecting on some difficult calls I've attended, where people were unable to speak to me through injury or illness and we were unable to find out who they were. I discovered that many people, obviously, carry mobile phones and we were using them to discover who they were. It occurred to me that if we had a uniform approach to searching inside a mobile phone for an emergency contact then that would make it easier for everyone."

Brotchie also urged

manufacturers to support the campaign by adding an ICE heading to the contact list of all new mobile phones. With this additional information and medical information, first responders can access this information from the victim's phone in the event of an emergency. In the event of

major trauma Major trauma is any injury that has the potential to cause prolonged disability or death. There are many causes of major trauma, blunt and penetrating, including falls, motor vehicle collisions, stabbing wounds, and gunshot wounds. Dependin ...

, it is critical to have this information within the golden hour, which can increase the chances of survival.

Criticism

While some emergency responders lauded the suggestion, others have criticised it. In Germany, the ''In Case of Emergency'' concept has been criticised for many reasons: *Medical service personnel on site normally do not have the time to contact relatives. Information stored on a phone is thus useless for medical care prior to hospital. *Contacting relatives of a seriously injured person is a sensitive task that is not carried out by telephone in the first place. It is recommended that one carries contact information and relevant medical information in writing inside one's wallet, and not rely on ICE contacts as a primary means of identification. Other problems include language-dependent text (ICE in English, ECU in French, etc. etc.), the difficulty of accessing locked, discharged, or broken phones, differences among mobile models requiring training of emergency responders. Many

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

models have dedicated ICE contact information functionality either built into the operating system, or available as an app. Saving duplicate phone numbers on a phone without dedicated ICE functionality may cause the ICE and regular contacts to be combined, or cause the caller ID to fail for incoming calls from a close friend or relative. (To avoid this, some use the 'tel:'

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to put the phone number in the ICE contact's 'home page' field.) A 'competing proposal' exists called

E.123 E.123 is an international standard by the standardization union (ITU-T), entitled ''Notation for national and international telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web addresses''. It provides guidelines for the presentation of telephone numbers, e ...

, which is also an official

ITU-T The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three sectors (divisions or units) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating standards for telecommunications and Information Commu ...

standard. The hoaxbuster site classified the claims of the programme as "partly true, partly false".

Locked phones

For security purposes, many mobile phone owners now lock their mobiles, requiring a passcode or PIN to be entered in order to access the device. This hinders the ability of first responders to access the ICE phone list entry. In response to this problem, many device manufacturers have provided a mechanism to specify some text to be displayed while the mobile is in the locked state. The owner of the phone can specify their 'In Case of Emergency' contact, and also a 'Lost and Found' contact. Android users running

Android Nougat Android Nougat ( codenamed Android N during development) is the seventh major version and 14th original version of the Android operating system. First released as an alpha test version on March 9, 2016, it was officially released on August 22, ...

(Android 7.0) or higher also have the ability to store emergency information and contact details accessible by others through the emergency call screen when the device is locked. Emergency contacts can be added to iPhone lock screens with the

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application, and accessed by tapping or swiping to the Emergency dialler, where calls to 911 or another pre-specified number can be made, and the Medical ID button is displayed as well. When accessing this Medical ID, the user's name, health information, allergies and medications can be listed, along with the ability to directly contact listed emergency contacts. Alternatively, some handsets provide access to a list of ICE contacts directly from the lock screen. There are also smartphone 'apps' (applications) that allow custom ICE and emergency information to be displayed on the 'locked' screen. For instance, th
Medical ID
Android app enables quick access to medical information and emergency contacts.

Popularity

The popularity of the programme is difficult to assess. A

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

article mentioned that the programme might be spreading into

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, but gave different instructions to its readers.

References

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External links