E-Mail Delivers Life-Saving Medical Help : Technology: Computer analyst sends SOS to co-workers, who quickly come to his aid. His pain worsened after a doctor had put him on hold.

There have been romances by E-mail, support groups by E-mail and fund raising by E-mail.

Now, Jack Miller has received lifesaving medical help using his electronic computer mail.

The computing analyst--stricken in his work cubicle with increasingly severe chest pains and losing consciousness--punched a few keys on his terminal and sent an SOS to co-workers at Witco Corp. in Woodcliff Lake.

They came running and administered CPR while waiting for paramedics to arrive.

“For me, E-mail means emergency mail,” Miller, 56, told the New York Daily News from his Paramus home, where he is recuperating. “I was going and nobody would have noticed.”

Miller isn’t doing any more interviews for now about the March 17 emergency. His telephone answering machine had a recorded message Friday, which said: “You’ve reached Jack Miller. The ringer is off and I’m too fatigued to give any kind of an interview. I thank you for your interest in calling.”

Ron Edelstein, a vice president at the chemical and petroleum company, said Miller is doing well but has not said when he will return to work.

Miller said he first felt the chest pain on St. Patrick’s Day during a lunchtime walk. When he returned to his isolated computer terminal he called his physician.

The doctor put him on hold and the pain worsened. He tried to shout for help but couldn’t.

So Miller used the only other method available. He typed, “HELP. FEEL SICK. NEED AID.”

“I could barely tap out the words,” he said. “My chest had this strange coldness and I just couldn’t breathe.”

The message, intended for a few nearby co-workers, popped up on the screens of 80 workers because Miller had hit the key programmed to send messages to all employees in his department, Edelstein said.

Within seconds, dozens of employees were darting through a maze of cubicles looking for the source of the distress call. Some who were certified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation worked on Miller until an ambulance crew transported him to a hospital.

“It’s the human element of the technologically linked community . . . the information highway,” said Howard Rheingold, author of “The Virtual Community.”

There are other stories, both touching and threatening, in the digital society.

Burke Stinson and Nancy J. Smith stayed in touch and in love through E-mail, conducting an electronic courtship before their wedding last year.

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The AT&T; workers--he in Basking Ridge and she in Philadelphia 60 miles away--racked up more than 400 pages of love letters.

President Clinton received a threat via E-mail, the Secret Service said Friday. The threat was sent through a computer account belonging to a former student at a Cincinnati school, and the agency believes someone else got hold of the former student’s password without his knowledge.

E-mail and other forms of computer communications also can be used for support groups, fund raising and helping strangers.

More than half of the 2,000 largest companies in North America have some form of E-mail, according to the Electronic Messaging Assn., an industry trade group.