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Comment by jon-wood | Hacker News Reader

Your app to find Emergency Rooms nearby shouldn't be used in emergencies? I'm not convinced a disclaimer like that it's going to cover you.

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I imagine the use would be, for the caregiver of a medically sensitive individual, to familiarize oneself with a new local area on arrival rather than waiting for an emergency situation.

For example: You've arrived in a new city. Open the app, see locations for ERs. Drive to each and familiarize yourself with the surroundings.

Yup, exactly. Recently I traveled to California and used the app to familiarize myself. I noticed that the closest hospital was 30+ minutes away. It was just good info even though I never really needed it.

It isn't reasonable to expect an app to replace 911.

That might not be what plays out in court, but the problem there is people aren't reasonable.

Hmm, this is a tough one. Given that it's just a different visualization on publicly accessible data, does the app have to safeguard against this in a special way? I used a disclaimer in the app, and went into detail in the privacy policy about how the app claims no responsibility to how the data is used. Do you have any suggestions as to a good way to handle these types of situations in general?

No.

I guess advertising the locations of hospitals and what hours they are open could be less fraught than advertising emergency rooms, but I'm not a lawyer.

Just looking at your description in the app store, it says that it gives people the "ability to find the nearest emergency room" not that it "provides a visualization of publicly accessible data". ie. your claim in your app description is different to what your app actually does. It is natural that you want to inflate the merits of your app because you want people to download it. But that is exactly the sort of thing that will get you into trouble in court, I would imagine. (IANAL, etc).

It's so people can plan out their visits and know what their options are in a new area.

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