Photo: Madison Rogers/WBZ NewsRadio
ANDOVER, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — An Andover, Mass. electrician, John King, is the owner of the company Life Saver Alert, which is a bathroom alarm system that helps to monitor and prevent people from overdoing on drugs.
King created the Life Saver Alert alarm, which uses motion sensor technology to monitor if a person goes into a bathroom and then stops moving for more than a couple of minutes.
The first alarm was installed in 2017 at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, which provides health care to thousands of homeless and formerly homeless individuals and families in the Greater Boston area.
The program was experiencing a lot of drug overdoses at facilities, particularly in their bathrooms, King explained. “They could see it, like a wave, going over the whole city. There was a lot of overdoses in the whole country basically.”
Over the past 25 years, over a million people have died because of a drug overdose in the U.S. In 2021 alone, over 100,000 people died from overdosing on drugs, reported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
King explained what happens when the alarm goes off. “I witnessed a couple of incidents when the alarm would go off, and security would check that somebody had overdosed. Security calls a code blue, and everybody comes running.”
King expressed his dedication to making the Life Saver Alert a reality. “My obsessive desire was to get this thing to work. I wasn’t going to stop until I figured it out.”
The alarm has been installed in bathrooms across the country. “We estimated about 3,500 overdoses, all those people have been saved,” said King.
“It takes the edge off of worrying about somebody overdosing in their facility,” stated King.
WBZ's Madison Rogers (@MadisonWBZ) reports.
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