An Australian woman used Siri to call an ambulance while she performed CPR, and credits the computer-programmed personal assistant with saving her daughters life.
Siri the lifesaver
Stacey Gleeson discovered her one-year-old daughter had stopped breathing and was turning blue, so ran to try and help. In the panic she dropped her smartphone as she dashed over to attempt to resuscitate her baby.
It was at this point she shouted over to Siri, “Hey Siri, call the ambulance,” using the voice activation capabilities, (Siri can be triggered on the most recent iPhones and iPads simply by saying “Hey Siri”). Luckily for the family, the personal assistant did just that, and called the emergency services as Ms. Gleeson began CPR. The distressed mom managed to communicate with the emergency services over loudspeaker and they arrived promptly to take the baby to hospital.
Giana Gleeson, the daughter, had been suffering from a severe chest infection and bronchiolitis and managed to start breathing again before the ambulance arrived, and thankfully made a full and complete recovery in hospital with no lasting damage.
Doctors have said that in case like this, every second is vital, and to that end, Siri may have saved the child’s life. Even if the phone had been in the mother’s hand, the stressful nature of the moment may have made the manual typing of a phone number a more difficult task, “Saving me the trouble of having to physically dial emergency services was a godsend,” Stacy stated.
Stacy stated she had previously only really used to Siri to call her husband Nic on the loudspeaker, as the put the children to bed, while he was away with the Navy.
The incident occurred in March, but the story has only now come to light, as Stacey got in touch with Apple who then notified 7 News, an Australian news outlet.
Siri getting an upgrade
Siri is a computer program that functions as a digital personal assistant and ‘knowledge navigator’. It was first introduced on the iPhone 4s and has been included on all Apple devices since October 2012. As well as being able to play music and send text messages, Siri can also initiate phone calls on demand without requiring a single button to be pushed.
Despite this particular feel good success story, and general critical acclaim since its first release, Siri is due to for a major overhaul. Industry experts suspect that it may be the star of the show at WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) starting June 13th in San Francisco.
As is the norm, gaining any insights prior to any Apple announcements is no easy task as the company remains as tight lipped as ever. It is believed that the upgrade will come in conjunction of the release of iOS 10. It is also expected that Siri could be making its way onto the OSX for the MacBooks and iMacs, which will be the first time the service has been available on laptop computers.
The digitalized personal assistant market is a competitive arena now. Amazon’s voice operating system for Echo devices is Alexa, (which it has been licensing to other companies including Invoxia which has used the technology in the Triby) and the Google Now is already on Android phones.
A Siri enabled speaker is also due for release but it unlikely this will be available until September at the earliest. Google Home, the voice activated speaker, has also been announced recently but is also not yet available for purchase.
