WASHINGTON — When a person goes into cardiac arrest, they only have about a 10-minute window to survive, and brain damage starts to occur between four and six minutes.

If cardiopulmonary resuscitation, more commonly known as CPR, is started right away, the results of a medical emergency can be less tragic.

That’s according to Richard Price, the founder and president of The PulsePoint Foundation. He says his free technology can actually help increase the chances for heart attack survival.

The PulsePoint app notifies nearby off-duty professionals and other CPR-trained individuals who are in the immediate vicinity of a cardiac arrest event.

“Our software runs in the 911 center and when we see a cardiac arrest is occurring, traditional resources will be dispatched but, at the same time, we’ll look for nearby CPR-trained citizens to start CPR,” Price says.

The technology has gotten some media attention in recent weeks, at a Shania Twain concert in Washington state.

“A couple of weekends ago in Spokane, Washington, at the Spokane Arena, there was cardiac arrest and someone called 911 to report it,” Price says.

“As a big arena, there was about 40 firefighters and paramedics that were in there that were notified and several responded. We gave the row number and the section number and had a retired firefighter and an off-duty firefighter perform CPR, and that person is doing very well now.”

In another recent instance, Price says, an off-duty ER doctor in Santa Clara, California responded to the church next door to her home.

The app is about to launch in Howard County, Anne Arundel and Richmond, Virginia. Twenty three states and 1,400 cities are currently using PulsePoint, as well as parts of Canada and Australia.

D.C., which has produced a lot of headlines about lagging ambulance response times this year, is now taking a look at the app, too.

“We need to obviously have buy-in from the stakeholders here, which would include fire and EMS and the dispatch center, because our software does need to be installed in the dispatch center,” Price says.

There would be no cost to the city.

“It’s just getting the stakeholders lined up and behind it… then we start a campaign, an outreach campaign, to encourage all our nurses and doctors and firefighters and paramedics and other CPR-trained citizens to download and carry the app and to opt in and to be part of that Army that we’re putting out there.”

WNEW D.C. Bureau Chief Kris Ankarlo contributed to this report. Follow him and WNEW on Twitter.