Voice-guided CPR device could save lives

Milwaukee-area North Shore Fire and Rescue's Lieutenant Dan Tyk has responded to 9-1-1 calls where patients could have been saved if the people who placed the call had only performed CPR.

He knows a heart attack can happen to someone anywhere at anytime. "The person is having, what we would consider, the worst day of their life," Tyk told CBS affiliate WDJT.

But many witnesses just don't know what to do.

Now some rescue squads are attempting to attain a lofty goal: to teach everyone -- from children to the elderly -- how to use CPR. Thanks to one company, getting to that goal may have gotten easier with a hand-held, voice-guided tool called the CPR RsQ Assist.

"It tells you where to place your hands and it takes away the question of how to do CPR," said Tyk.

Milwaukee native Joe Hanson is both the voice and designer behind the CPR RsQ Assist, which costs about $80. His Franklin-based company spent several years working on it before getting FDA approval this winter. He hopes his device will end up at schools, churches and homes across the U.S.

Hanson's voice guides you through chest compression at an even pace of 100 per minute. The contact pad is sized to work on any patient and reduce the risk of cracking someone's ribs.

"It should bring a lot more people around to the fact that, 'hey I can do this too,'" Hanson told WDJT. "If you do nothing, that victim stays dead. Nothing else is going to happen. There's no other magic."