Livestream your gunshot wound? It may save your life - CNET

The Air Ambulance team that Wilson works with deals with the most traumatic medical incidents across the British capital, where every minute knocked off the response time counts. In such scenarios, every bit of extra insight before the crew takes off is critical.

In a life-threatening emergency, an alerter can open the app and hit the "call for help" button. This will cause several things to happen simultaneously. It will put the alerter through to the local emergency services on the phone while sending out GPS signals to local registered responders, who will see an alert pop up on their own phones. When they open the app, they will automatically be able to see a real-time video of the scene streamed from the alerter's phone

This isn't the same kind of live stream you would get with Periscope. Given the nature of the emergencies, GoodSAM has put measures in place to ensure patient confidentiality. The video stream is secured with end-to-end encryption so that the pictures, audio and other data it relays cannot be intercepted by unauthorized meddlers, according to GoodSAM's technical director, Ali Ghorbangholi.

Over 7,000 people across the world -- including off-duty doctors, nurses and paramedics -- are signed up with the service as trained and verified first responders. In addition, as of October 2015, GoodSAM was also incorporated into the official dispatch system of the London Ambulance Service.

The app's creators are trying to get more ambulance services around the world to follow suit, which would give them access to the live-streaming feature. Funded by British innovation charity Nesta, GoodSAM is a collaborative nonprofit organization that has no exclusivity rights, so can potentially be used by anyone anywhere.

The other challenge for GoodSAM is to persuade regular folks to use the app.