This drone saved 6 lives (Patreon)

[This is a transcript with links to references.]

The Swedish Karolinska Institutet near Stockholm has tested drones for delivering defibrillators in response to emergency calls, and the results of their trial are very promising.

In a recent paper they released the results of their test program. It ran in collaboration with the company Everdrone from April 2021 through May 2022 and covered an area near Stockholm where roughly 200 thousand people live.

If someone in that area calls 1-1-2, that’s the European emergency call, and reports a suspected cardiac arrest, they send a drone with a defibrillator on the way.

For their trial they’ve been deploying five hexacopters of the model DJI Matrice 600 Pro.

These can fly up to 12 kilometres in distance at up to 60 kilometres per hour, and they are strong enough to carry the defibrillators which weight about 800 grams.

These defibrillators can be used even by amateurs to deliver an electric shock to the heart. This can restore normal heart rhythm and save lives, if the cardiac arrest was caused by certain types of arrhythmias.

During the trial, they sent out a total of 55 drones to suspected cardiac arrest cases. In thirty-seven of those cases, that’s about two thirds, the drone arrived before the ambulance, on average three minutes and 14 seconds earlier. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but for a cardiac arrest three minutes can be the difference between life and death. Out of all those suspected heart attack cases, 18 were actual cardiac arrests, and in 6 of those cases the drone-delivered defibrillator came to be used by bystanders.  

And that’s great, but I would really like to be able to pre-order them, so I can have one in wait next time I look at my stocks.