On August 9^th 2014, around 7 pm, Sarah, my life partner, best friend, confidante and wife, had a heart attack (her main heart arteries suddenly blocked), which then induced a cardiac arrest (her heart stopped!) from ventricular fibrillation (that is, the heart’s electrical signals stopped).

At the time, we were lying in bed, watching TV at the foot of the bed, and both pottering (I should have been studying for an Operations Management exam) and reading on our iPads. I was debating with myself about whether to go downstairs and clean up the garage versus continuing to ’bludge’ in bed.

I then heard her make a clucking sound, like our chickens in Fiji used to do, so didn't take notice straight away, as I thought she was ‘bunging’ it on at first, to be humorous.

Then her head fell to the side with her tongue slightly hanging outside her mouth, almost like you see when kids fake being shot and dying.

I then started to panic, and ran around the bed to try and understand what was going on – as Sarah has type 1 diabetes, I at first thought maybe it was hypoglycaemic shock, and was frantically thinking about whether I could find the Glucogon pen, or Epi Pen, and whether I would be able to ‘stab it in’?

So I checked to see if she was dripping sweat, and she wasn't, so now I knew this wasn't related to her blood sugars, as when she is typically ‘low’.

Her clucking sounds were coming every now and then, and this later I was to discover was Sarah trying to breathe.

I now went into a complete Funk – Freeze, Flight and Fight. First I wanted to scream and have somebody come save me – but there was no one, as we live in a very quiet apartment block. I started blubbering like a little girl, and ran up and down on the same spot as if trying to run away.

It should be appreciated that my understandable ‘freaking out’ was surprising, considering my many (30+) years of managing and dealing with sensory overload from so called risky sports of hang gliding, motorbike racing and skydiving.

I snapped out of it when I realised I needed to put some pants on – my family, very much later laughed at this (I wasn't known as the naked gardner in Fiji for nothing) – but this physical, practical, unrelated to the emergency action, made me start to react proactively.

So, I raced back around the bed to hunt for my phone, which had fallen behind the bed earlier that afternoon, lamenting iPhone pass codes, and called 000 emergency. (Maybe a voice override recognition emergency option would be a good idea?)

I got straight through, and the calm reassuring emergency responder person, began me on my way to getting Sarah from the bed to the carpet.

This proved challenging, as anyone who has tried to move a prone body will know. She had part fallen between the bedside drawers and bed, so was becoming wedged, and suspended mid air as the bedside drawer moved to jam the bedroom door on the cat play stand against the wall – an unbelievable nightmare!

With extreme adrenaline supported effort, I managed to get the non breathing Sarah on the floor.

So here I was blubbering like a stuck pig, phone in one hand to ear, and beginning a lame one handed CPR on Sarah. The operator did not want to let me put the phone down, I guess in case she lost me. But I put it down, hit the speaker, and then began some serious two handed CPR, hoping like hell it was in the optimum location.

Lots of people say it should be to the beat of the BeeGees ‘Staying Alive’, but I can tell you, all I did was do it as fast as I could, which was about 2 compresses every second. There were no dam tunes going through my mind, BeeGees or otherwise.

I lost all sense of time, and even now couldn't tell you how long it took me to begin CPR – in the days that followed, by visualising what I remember doing, I estimate it was 2 minutes, but it could have been 30 seconds or 30 minutes. I will never know!

From my phone call, to the paramedics arriving was documented as 6 minutes – remarkable, fantastic, fortunate coincidence, as the wonderful NSW Paramedics happened to be very close by. Usually it is around 11 minutes, but of course can be up to 30 minutes in extreme cases in traffic, excess  demand etc.

They were followed closely by the volunteer Hatzolah Paramedics that primarily attended cardiac arrest cases – one of only two suburbs in Sydney which have this valuable, dedicated service, sponsored by the generous Jewish community.

They took over from me, a sweaty, blubbering mess.

They administered an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) shock, but as it was now 8 or 9 minutes, they had to continue CPR for another 25 minutes, and I like to think that my sorry traumatised condition spurred them on for longer than they normally might have. (An AED needs to be administered within the first 5 minutes, as after this time it becomes increasingly less likely to revive someone.)

They eventually, miraculously brought her back, and after some time got her stable and started the Herculean task of getting her down three flights of stairs unconscious in a stretcher.

The seven paramedics were great, constantly reassuring me, and I didn't notice at the time, but Sarah’s mum observed them giving high fives in the street, whilst Sarah and I were loaded up into two separate ‘ambo’s’ (ambulances).

It turns out that they had been unable to revive and save the previous 28 cardiac arrest victims. Cardiac arrest is a ‘mongrel’ (horrible human tragedy!) It strikes instantly, often without warning,  and is almost certainly fatal, particularly if no early intervention, within seconds - not minutes or hours.

Sarah’s miracle continued. So far, the stars had aligned, with me coming to my senses and calling emergency services, then performing CPR (not sure how effective it was), emergency services answering immediately (on a Saturday night!), the paramedics life saving rapid response, and then having world class on call, ready to go, cardiac surgeons at St Vincents hospital – one of only two teams ready at separate Sydney hospitals available for unscheduled cardiac surgery emergency. (A young man in his late twenties had a cardiac arrest at the same time, and was sent to the other hospital, Royal Prince of Wales – he died on the surgery table).

She received two stents in her primary heart artery, and spent the next 14 days in intensive care in a coma. The attending doctors were not sure how much brain injury she had sustained, and I was petrified that her personality, and her ‘brain the size of a planet’ might be compromised. Many of her friends (very much later), joked that if she lost half her brains, she still would be smarter than most people.

When Sarah ‘woke’ up from her coma, although she had by this stage had her ventilator tube replaced by a tracheotomy, (so she still couldn't talk), she lit up when I walked into the ICU. (After Day four, a particular Doctor I nicknamed Dr. Doom, continually suggested that as each day passed, we were increasingly likely to get a zucchini back, and not our Sarah.)

I knew she was back, albeit with her side trek to hell, and the joy I felt at her recognising me, and with an intelligent look in her eye, was indescribable.

She now had to learn to eat, swallow, cough up fluid, and then walk, over next 25 days.

Whilst Sarah was in hospital, I was learning a lot about patient care, drugs and how woefully unprepared I had been about cardiac arrests and heart attacks.

Due to the horror of dealing with what happened to Sarah, we are committed to making this dream a reality, because in the years ahead, I would hate to see this level of cardiac arrest death, trauma and subsequent human misery for other people in the world, when there is the technological means to alleviated his human tragedy.

What I learned really shocked me.

Cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), (Out of Hospital), is the number one biggest killer in the world at around 6 to 7 million deaths p.a. Bigger than malaria which is around 3 million p.a. Total heart disease related deaths (stroke and heart attacks etc) account for a staggering 26 million people p.a.!!! 1000 people per day die from SCA in the USA, and 30 000 people p.a. in Australia. It is estimated to cost $380 Billion p.a. within the hospital system in the USA?!

So, I started to try and work out a solution as to how to approach this problem. My first approach was to consider employing first responders on much lower cost scooters equipped with AED’s, special bike helmets with voice GPS all under the existing paramedic services infrastructure umbrella.

The idea being that these responders would be volunteers, with a minimum of training (that is, knowing CPR and how to use the AED’s), and located in suburbia in far greater numbers than centrally located Ambulance services, only responding to cardiac emergencies, and aiming to get there in under 5 minutes.

To my mind, the scooter concept was a great idea, which I reluctantly had to let go. Sarah, initially said it was a great idea (for encouragement purposes I suspect), but kept pointing out the ‘bleeding’ obvious – the logistics of achieving this in Sydney, let alone around the world, would be nigh on impossible!

I read up on Samaritan Sam in London, essentially an APP illustrating where the nearest AED’s were, and although they had tremendous life saving results in a large densely populated city, this couldn't be effective in regional sparsely populated communities.

Airlines have achieved a 70% survival rate with many AED’s in close proximity, and Las Vegas Casinos at 80%. Seattle, in the USA achieves around 56% survival rate, as it is mandatory for every vehicle license holder to be certified in CPR. (Interestingly, I saw a map of Singapore University where they had placed literally hundreds of AED’s all over campus. This must have cost over a $1M and demonstrates their understanding of the life saving value in AED’s!)

So the take away from this is that readily accessible AED’s, and early CPR intervention, achieves a greater than 50% survival rate from a world wide current average survival rate of 1%, USA at around average 5%, and Australia around average 3%.

Begrudgingly, I looked more closely at the AED, to see why it was so expensive, and thus not widely available.

Through my various readings and research, it was suggested that expense was due to the very large battery necessary to retain charge for up to 4 years, high quality assurance to ensure functionality when it was needed over this time frame, and of course the relatively low volumes to support true scales of economy.

These three key determinations allowed me to keep researching ways of achieving solutions. A break through then followed, when I realized that implantable defibrillators were so much smaller (the size of 3 large 50 cent coins stacked upon each other ~ roughly speaking), with the bulk of their mass again donated to a 10 year battery, and the ‘voltage delivery and sensors taking up the space of half a cigarette in size.

These devices are enormously costly, again due to smaller volumes manufactured, very expensive due to surgically appropriate materials (like gold for circuits), huge R & D to be amortized, and costly medical regulatory compliance costs.

The exact realization of getting a small device such as this implantable defibrillator into a smart phone was not a linear process, but made perfect sense! Many discussions with Sarah and my partner in this endeavor, Andre, allowed a true brainstorming discovery process.

With 2016 projected sales of two billion smart phones world wide, it must be the most coveted, ubiquitous prized possession of everyone, from young kids to the elderly.

This takes care of the volume consideration and economies of scale that could reduce the manufacturing cost.

The technology thus exists to reduce the size of the AED, by having the delivery of the required voltage in the size of cigarette sized cylinder, which could then be placed in the bottom of the phone case.

The sensing components (pads) would be specially designed fold out and expandable from the back of the case – very thin, and wires concertinaed.

The voice and visual display would be downloadable in APP form, with speaker already in the smart phone.

No requirement for a battery, which would utilize the iPhone (and potentially other devices like the iPad) built in battery, which is kept small by regular over night charging.

With AED mode utilization, the battery charge would be used completely over a 30 minute to 40 minute AED mode working period.

Lower quality standard requirements for components that remain outside the body, and which typically, only need to last a year, two at the most as compared with an AED.

Initially, it is felt that the phone case is the preferred location of the AED, as once it is used, a new one would be required. If it were placed in the iPhone itself, costs may go up, and servicing cost would be enormous. Discussions with Smart phone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung are planned however in the future.

The power of this idea, is that the affordability, and thus availability by virtually everyone, if the cost of the CELLAED is around the same cost of a current phone case!

(And with the planned, simply beautiful, futuristic range of materials and designs of phone cases to come, it will be easy to see universal adoption.)

To ensure this affordability and widespread use, we have structured this enterprise as a Not for Profit Association – so profits are retained to continue the development of this social enterprise, and not be distributed to a few share holders, thereby benefiting everyone in the world.

With a successful future global business, we are aiming to then fund research into heart disease and see if we can identify causality and treatments to this horrific malady. We will also look at methods for ensuring the rest of humanity has the option to access this life saving technology by subsidizing smart phones in many countries that most people cannot afford, are among the many other solutions we are discussing.

Losing Sarah would have been unimaginable for me, so too is the loss of millions of other lives, and the misery attached seems unacceptable to me. Sarah had two days prior to the cardiac arrest, just ‘hit the send button’ on her ‘Draft Code of Practice for Autologous Stem Cell Therapies in Australia’– so the loss would not only have been to me, family and friends, but the medical scientific community.