Delivery drones don’t just carry groceries or orders from Amazon. They can also save lives, as happened in Sweden where a defibrillator drone transport program was set up.
Last month in Sweden, a 71-year-old man plowing snow outside his house suffered a heart attack. He was saved by a defibrillator delivered very quickly to the scene by a drone part of the emergency aerial medical delivery program developed by the company Everdrone.
Ten minutes to save a life
The objective of this service is to allow the emergency services to immediately send a drone equipped with the medical device to the scene of the accident. In many cases, the drone is faster than an ambulance. In the case of the above patient, a passerby – coincidentally, a doctor – provided first aid and used the defibrillator.
The drone was developed by Everdrone, with assistance from the Karolinska Institute’s Resuscitation Science Center, SOS Alarm, and Västra Götaland County (West Coast of Sweden). The example of this success against death demonstrates the interest of this solution, which Everdrone hopes to be able to extend as much as possible. Currently, the service reaches an area of 200,000 residents. But expansion to other European countries is possible.
In the event of a heart attack, you must react quickly, usually within ten minutes of the onset. A pilot study has shown that in 14 cases eligible for an aerial delivery of a defibrillator, 12 drones took off to the scene of the accident, 11 arrived to deliver the device, 7 before the ambulances arrived.
