Tracing Next of Kin

[Guest chucky.egg]

I read a short article in Landmobile which talks about a new "globally-recognized" standard for emergency workers searching for next-of-kin contact information.

Emergency workers searching for next-of-kin information for an injured person now have a globally recognised way of doing so, through a new standard from the ITU. Simply prefixing 01, 02, 03 and so on to a nominated contact, such as '01father', '02wife' or '03husband' written in any script in the mobile telephone directory will enable emergency workers in any part of the world to identify contacts in order of priority and notify them

In some English-speaking countries , 'In Case of Emergency' - or ICE - has emerged, encouraging the public to list emergency contact numbers in their mobile phone in the form of 'ICE father', for example, or 'ICE doctor'. However, helpers who do not use or recognize the Roman script may not recognize the term.Now the ITU will work with the non-profit organization ICE4SAFETY to promote the new method of identifying emergency contacts.

The new standard, which is a clause to the ITU-T Recommendation E.123, internationalizes the ICE concept and recommends the use of Arabic numerals (0 to 9) to denote emergency contact numbers in a handsets directory. It exploits the fact that even though written scripts differ around the world these digits are universally recognized, making it usable by anyone, regardless of language or script.

For more information see www.ice4safety.com

Now, I have to say I was never a fan of "ICE" in the first place - I can't see your average ambulance driver bothering when they have a patient to deal with, quite apart from the fact that they might not want to be seen to be "riffling through the victims pockets".

This new system doesn't seem to improve things either.

Adding a zero-based prefix to an existing contact is fine, but you'd need to rename "Joanne Bloggs" to "01 wife" which would be counter-intuitive when you're trying to dial them, which would happen much more often than a paramedic searching (hopefully!).

So, instead you could create a new contact called "01 wife", for example, with all the same information as "Joanne Bloggs". But now, when they send you a text or call you it appears to be from "01 wife" which isn't too confusing (again, hopefully!), but it's not the behaviour I want from my phone. On top of that, I now have 2 contacts to manage whenever the missus changes her phone numbers.

If they'd chosen a prefix which would put the new contact at the END of the ponebook list, instead of at the begining, it would solve the incoming call/message issue of a duplicate contact. That still leaves us to manage the duplicate info though.

I can see a lot of people doing this, but I can also see a lot of people who are heavy mobile users NOT doing it because, lets face it, it's a bodge. I don't think it matters that some will and some won't, but if universality is not important why bother with a new standard?

I still think, if it's serious enough to involve somebody examining your mobile in search of next of kin info, there are plenty of other places they can get information from that "they" would turn to first.

Any ambulance drivers, police men, firemen (or women) care to comment? Or perhaps anyone who's needed emergency aid in a foreign country (how long did they spend playing with your mobile?)

[Guest chucky.egg]

Aha, this might be a solution to the "duplicate contact number" issue:

My phone doesn't show the callers name any more

This will be because your ICE contact number is a duplicate entry of another contact in your phone book. If you have two numbers the same, your phone won't know which one to display so it will show just the number. To get round this, simply type a * after the number under your ICE contact. It will still work and will cure the caller-ID problem.

Source

[Guest tsutton]

Well, they won't find anything from my phone because I set to have PIN lock!

Pointless...

[Guest chucky.egg]

:D

Nor mine, because I use the worlds slowest HTC Touch - I'll have died before they get into Contacts

[Guest Confucious]

ICE seemed like such a good idea - until you tried it!

It was a kludge which is why it never took off.

I lost a phone once and got it back coz the person who found it found 'Mum' in my phone book. Probably easier to find and I think my partner would rather my mum did the panicing than her!

[Guest andrewkeith5]

Of course, there is a really very easy way for us Windows Mobile Pro users to overcome all of the issues of the ICE debate

I just have my phone setup to display my owner info screen with the ICE information whenever you take the phone out of standby. That way the info appears every time the phone turns on, and always before my PIN number kicks in

phoneownerinfo.bmp

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Yeah, that would work pretty well really....

P