For your ICE Only

April 30, 2008

Do you have an “ICE” number in your mobile phone? If none, then you should create one in case of emergency. The acronym “ICE” was originally conceived by British Bob Brotchie, a Cambridge paramedic, wherein this acronym must be placed in every mobile phone for designated contact person in case of emergency. But identifying who are the appropriate person as your ICE member/partner is not that easy. Below are the following hints for assigning ICE contact:

1. You should have an agreement with the person’s name and number to be your ICE partner. The partner should know some of your medical conditions.

2. The ICE persons’ number should be accessible. For example, a home number is useless if the person works full time in the office. Thus, you can have more than one ICE partner and can be assigned as ICE1, ICE2, ICE# and so on.

3. If you are under 18 years of age, your primary ICE partner is your parent or guardian authorized to make decisions (e.g. Life and death operation).

ICE in my own way: “As Filipino”

I notice in our country, the ICE phenomenon is not very much visible. Even the awareness drive is not obvious. I even tried asking more than 10 professional filipinos about it and it seems the idea is new to to them. To think that this has been practiced in First World countries since May 2005. But as a cellphone user for more than 10 years already, I always put a contact number on my cellphone in case of emergency or misplacing it. I am familiar of more than 5 brands of cellphone and this is what I do:

a. During the analog era of mobile communication, I usually put a sticker name at the back of the cellphone for my ICE partner number.

b. When SMS was introduced, I usually put the ICE number at the Greeting screen as a heading. However, this is only seen everytime you switch on the phone. Some phone models have a feature wherein you can make a scrolling text together with your ICE number while the phone is in standby mode.

c. Today with colored phones, I created a wallpaper that indicates the ICE numbers within. But, what I usually do with my cellphone is to create a note message then show it while on Standby mode.

d. I think in a PDA or other sophisticated phones, you can make a screen saver showing your assigned ICE number.

“Be prepared: ICE your phone”

So, I guess you have your own way of saying to the world that this number on my phone is for your eyes only. I think we will agree that in one way or another, we must be a concerned citizen not just in ordinary days but especially during emergency cases. And, thanks to Mr. Brotchie who encourages people to enter emergency contacts in their cellphone address book under the name “ICE”, he has also urged cellphone manufacturers to put the ICE number as heading screen in every cellphone similar to what I’m doing now. I just hope others will do the same. For your reference, there are organization, blogsite, software and sticker campaigns on the Internet that support this idea of Mr. Brotchie .