One autonomous drone helped save the life of a 71-year-old man who had a cardiac arrest. Thanks to the drone which delivered a defibrillator, the doctor helping the man could save his life.
The man fell ill while he was shovelling snow, just outside his house in Trollhattan in Sweden.
The man who didn’t want to be named said how it was fantastic that the device arrived so fast. The drone company said that defibrilation could start before the ambulance arrived on the scene.
Believe it or not, it only took three minutes from the alarm being raised to the delivery of the AED to the location.
Passing Doctor Stops to Help the Man Who Was Suffering a Cardiac Arrest
The patient said he doesn’t remember what occured on that day in early December, 2021. He was out in front of his home, shovelling the snow; however, things went black all of a sudden.
He was really lucky since Dr. Mustafa Ali was driving past in the moment of the accident and immediately stopped to help the man out. He was driving to work at the local hospital when he saw that the man collapsed on the ground.
The man had no pulse so Ali began administering CPR and asked another bystander to call the emergency. Several minutes into the rescue, something was flying above them: it was the drone carrying a defibrillator.
According to the chief executive of Everdrone, Mats Sallstrom, tech played a key role in saving this man’s life. It’s the doctor doing the CPR, the early defibrilation, and the treatment in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
There’s a chain of events, Sallstrom notes, that is saving a person’s life and a drone is an essential part of how this system functions.
The Drone Plays a Crucial Role in Saving People with Cardiac Arrest
This drone is a collab between the Karolinska Institutet, the largest medical university in Sweden and the national emergency operator SOS Alarm, Region Vastra Gotaland, and Everdrone.
Two years ago, the group researched the usage of drones for defibrillator delivery in Kungalv and Gothenburg. In the study that lasted for four months, the researchers found that the drones were dispatched in 12 out of 14 suspected cardiac arrests and helped in all but one case.
And, in seven of the cases, the drones were faster than the ambulances. As of 2020, Everdrone claims the system has become much faster; they’re currently focused on working with the dispatchers who instruct the people on site since the drones are designed to be used by untrained individuals.
Their goal is to bring the tech to other countries too, including the UK. The Swedish drone system is included in the emergency dispatch system and is ready to fly as soon as the call suggesting a cardiac arrest is noted.
Despite being autonomous, the drone is overseen by a pilot in command due to safety and management of air traffic.
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