[Talk-GB] "Help 999 teams find missing heart defibrillators"

[Jass Kurn]

This is about a news release regarding "The Circuit", its access to OS
Data, and a request for people to submit their defibrillators.

After several years of discussions, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) has
been chosen to create a new national database of defibrillators that are
made available for emergency public use (bystander defibrillation). The
project is called "The Circuit". Prior to this the information was broken
up, incomplete, and split between several different organizations.

This Circuit may have received data from other databases, but it appears
much of the data is newly created. Defibrillator data is added by the
owner(s) of the defibrillator, which are commonly local community
organisations. There are major issues with mapping the location of
defibrillators. Location data appears to be created through standard UK
addresses. But many defibrillators have been put in locations without
addresses (old telephone boxes), or are located using postcode data which
can place the  defibrillator 100's of meters from its actual location.

The BBC article is about a partial solution to the location issue. Public
Sector organisations can get free access to Ordnance Surveys
databases, which could be used to improve mapping data. But, The Circuit is
not an official Public Sector organisation. So... Ordnance Survey accepted
a work around where the East Midlands Ambulance Service will legally access
the data on behalf of The Circuit. The result is that The Circuit can now
access OS data to allocate a UPRN to each address. This should provide more
accurate locations, and objects such as disused telephone boxes should have
a UPRN.

The BBC news release also brings up and discusses the need for
defibrillator owners to register their defibrillators with The Circuit. The
"elephant in the room".  From my local experience, there are more missing
from the database than there are wrongly located.

Below is a link to the OS press release.
https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/newsroom/news/british-heart-foundation-database-defibrillators


Jass



On Fri, 1 Jul 2022 at 13:10, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:

> BBC News: "Ambulance services are appealing for the public's help to
> find 70,000 defibrillator devices scattered in community locations
> across the UK."
>
> "Ordnance Survey can give it a Unique Property Reference Number to
> identify the precise location."
>
>    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61992745
>
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>
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