Take a few seconds this weekend to put your favorite senior’s cell phone on ICE. Ice stands for “in case of emergency.”  Emergency room physicians are frequently faced with being asked to treat critically ill or hurt patients but have no idea who the patient is or his/her medical history.

They typically look for the patient’s contact and medical information in two places:

• Their wallet
• Their cell phones

“The ICE program was originally rolled-out in the UK and has made its way to the U.S. in recent years.  The programe encourages cell phone users to put their emergency contact numbers into their cell phone under ICE.  Emergency room physicians have been trained to look under ICE in a patient’s cell phone if the patient arrives and is unable to communicate coherently with the physician.

WebMD reports that “most people don’t have ICE on their cell phones, but they’ll plug those letters into their cell phones once they learn why it’s important, a new study shows.”

The study was presented “in New Orleans, at the 37th annual scientific assembly of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP).”

The researchers included Dennis McKenna, MD, or New York’s Albany Medical Center.

“‘We are often struggling to reach family members when a patient cannot speak to us, and the first place we might look is a cell phone,’ McKenna Says, in an ACEP news release.

‘ A family member or friend is one of our best resources for learning about the patient’s medical history,’ he explains.

‘Our study shows that people are very willing to program their phones as long as someone tells them why and how to do it, or even does it for them,’ McKenna says.”