When a 71-year-old man from Trollhättan, Sweden, suffered a sudden cardiac attack last month, aid came in the most improbable of ways: a drone carrying a life-saving defibrillator. The fast-acting delivery device allowed Dr. Mustafa Ali, who was driving by when he observed the man collapse; to begin defibrillation before the ambulance arrived, playing a critical role in preserving the man’s life. “I can’t express how grateful I am for this innovative technology and the defibrillator’s prompt arrival.”I definitely wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the drone,” the 71-year-old patient stated in a statement to Everdrone.
The man has since recovered completely and returned home. The time it took for the drone to arrive from the moment the call was placed to emergency services was just over three minutes, much less than the usual ambulance response time in Sweden, which is between five and ten minutes in urban areas.
It is estimated that the chance of life decreases by 7-10% for every minute that passes after cardiac arrest without defibrillation. The likelihood of survival after five minutes is exceedingly poor, and the survival rate of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests is less than 10%, emphasizing the significance of a rapid deployment system. Aerial drones, according to Everdrone, are the finest method.
As a result, the business has been testing its drone-based defibrillator system in Västra Götaland, Sweden, in partnership with the Karolinska Institutet’s Center for Resuscitation Science and SOS Alarm. They claim to have a population of over 200,000 people in Sweden, with plans to grow too many more by 2022. Defibrillation devices effectively supplied for 92 percent – 11 out of 12 – of the cardiac arrest notifications that were tried during a four-month pilot study in 2021. Seven of them came before the ambulance arrived.
“This is a truly groundbreaking technology that needs to be adopted all over; sudden cardiac arrest may happen to anyone, not just the elderly with arteriosclerosis,” the patient explained. These are not your typical drones. Each drone has a route-planning system, onboard obstacle avoidance system, emergency parachutes, and an automatic landing system to land securely near the patient, thanks to a dedicated team of software developers at their Mission Control Centre. Because the drones are self-contained, they can send by emergency services while en route to a patient, even if the patient has already landed by the time they reach.
