App Review: AIDR

Summary: AIDR is a new app to help you with an emergency situation, even if you don’t have internet. This is a great resource to have on your phone, particularly if you like to explore in areas that may have spotty to no coverage. Bitten by a snake? Injure your eye? Exposed to contaminated water? All those scenarios and more are answered here, with the answers and sources clearly listed. And the sources of information are legit, so download away! IOS only for now.

Review

Have you ever been on a hike and gotten into trouble? Worse, have you ever gone on a hike and gotten into trouble, and then NOT had cell service? The answer to that for me is yes, as I’m sure it is for many of you. Ideally before every hike you’ve been prepared, so you have enough water and other supplies. But what if you encounter something else that you can’t always prepare for? This is a job for AIDR.

AIDR was built by a student at UT Arlington, The developer is an Eagle Scout with a deep love of hiking and exploration, and wanted to provide a service for people in an emergency, who needed to know how to handle them. It was inspired by an incident involving his mom at Acadia National Park in Maine. He reached out to me directly about his app, and I’ve been playing around with it for the last bit, and am impressed. I think it could definitely come in handy in certain situations!

It’s very simple to use. When you open the app, you have two main ways to navigate. You can either use the Emergency Guide, and search the database by keyword to find the information you need, or you can go through the Emergency Assessment and go through a series of questions to get to the appropriate answers. The information is stored on your phone, so if you’ve lost cell service, you can still get to the right information. That information is also sourced, and AIDR uses credible sources for its guidance. Sources for information include the Mayo Clinic, American Red Cross, Spring Valley Emergency Center, etc. That’s important, as there is a lot of misinformation floating around the internet.

The Emergency Guide (i.e. keyword) is well done, and provides you the matching cards of topics with names and level of danger (Critical Urgent, Moderate and Mild) with color coding. Once you click on one of the options, you’ll get a detailed page showing the warning signs, response actions, and link to the sources.

The Emergency Assessment option walks you through the options, allowing you to select which best fits your scenario. Is it a wildlife encounter? Water related? Trauma or Injury? Navigation? Pick the option, and then go to the next page to further refine, until you get to the actionable level and you’ll get to the information you need (warning signs, response actions, and link to sources).

You can also establish an emergency contact, who the app can notify in case of an emergency. You can also set the Emergency Services Number (i.e. 911) for the country / location you are in. Should you pull up a Critical scenario (many fall into that bucket), it will also prompt if you want to notify your emergency contact (so be careful, if you are just playing around with the app). If you want to notify your emergency contact, they will receive a text message from you detailing the kind of emergency you are having. The ability to notify an emergency contact will be of course limited if you do not have cell phone service.

Screen Shots

AIDR Review Wrap-Up

Like I said above, when you are out in the middle of nowhere, whether it’s in North Texas or Yosemite, being prepared is critical. I see AIDR as being a great tool in your broader toolkit, to have with you. You always want to bring enough water, have a map, make sure people know where you are, have some basic first aid supplies, and now you can add the AIDR to that preparedness list as well.

Available only for IOS only at this time

Official website