A man in Sweden lives today thanks to – in part – a drone. The 71-year-old suffered a heart attack while shoveling snow in December and was resuscitated by a nearby doctor after a drone flew into a defibrillator, Everdrone reported Tuesday.
Someone with a heart attack needs help within 10 minutes to survive. Everdrone’s Emergency Medical Aerial Delivery (EMADE) service is designed to provide assistance as quickly as possible – it allows emergency responders to send a drone carrying the device to a caller’s home, starting the life-saving process before the ambulance reaches their destination. home arrives. In the case of this particular patient, it took three minutes for services to deliver the defibrillator to his home. A bystander, who happened to be a doctor on his way to work, used the AED on the patient after he performed CPR.
The drone was developed in collaboration with the Center for Resuscitation Science of the Karolinska Institutet, SOS Alarm and the Västra Götaland region.
Image: Everdrone
“This is an excellent real-world example of how Everdrone’s advanced drone technology, fully integrated with emergency call, can minimize the time to access life-saving AED equipment,” said Everdrone CEO Mats Sällström.
In a four-month pilot study testing the EMADE program, the agency received 14 heart attack warnings that would qualify for drones. In 12 of those cases, drones took off and 11 successfully delivered the defibrillators. Seven of those defibrillators were delivered before the ambulance arrived.
According to Everdrone, about 275,000 patients in Europe go into cardiac arrest every year, and about 70 percent of those arrests take place in a private home with no defibrillator on site. The survival rate is around 10 percent.
Currently, the EMADE service can reach 200,000 Swedish residents. The company said it plans to expand to more locations in Europe this year.
