Health Notes: Ricky Rubio to the rescue in online video

Minnesota Timberwolves star Ricky Rubio also is the star of a video designed to save lives.

The interactive video, produced by the Medtronic Foundation’s HeartRescue Project, shows Rubio working out in a fitness center. Within eyesight, another man collapses. What to do? Options are offered from the perspective of a second person; his hands are seen, but nothing else. If the viewer makes the right choices, he uses chest compressions to try to restore the victim’s heartbeat, and Rubio runs to get an automated external defibrillator. The viewer’s character then uses the AED. In the final scene, we see the victim looking back at his helpers as EMTs take him away.

The viewer also can make choices that don’t turn out so well, such as “keep working out” and “panic.”

The idea of the video is to teach people what to do if someone nearby experiences sudden cardiac arrest. A Medtronic news release points out that 2,000 Americans younger than 25 die of sudden cardiac arrest annually.

To watch for yourself, go to HeartRescueNow.com and click “start.”

Medtronic Foundation is the charitable wing of Minneapolis-based medical-technology maker Medtronic.

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