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Deliver AEDs by drone before the ambulance arrives

An AED could be flown to the scene of a cardiac arrest by drone. A UK project tested a version of this: a drone flew an AED beyond the pilot's line of sight, dropped it by parachute at a simulated cardiac arrest in a remote area of Wales, and lay responders used it. The final delivery of 4.5 km took 2 minutes 50 seconds. This was a flight test, not a patient trial, and the authors say more research is needed before routine use.

  • Idea
  • In this atlas

Overview

Technical summary

PLoS One 2021 (PMC8592459, open access, CC BY 4.0): six flights totalling 92 km and 1 hour 2.5 minutes of flight time, four successful parachute payload drops, and a Penguin B fixed-wing drone with satellite-enabled technology. The authors write that regulatory barriers exist, including limits on flights beyond visual line of sight. The abstract does not report the time from the call to the first shock or any patient outcome.

Hypothesis

Hypothesis, not a result. Nothing here has been demonstrated.

A drone could deliver an AED to the scene of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest before an ambulance arrives, so that a bystander can use it earlier.

Maturity
Early feasibility
Rationale
The paper's background says feasibility studies of sending AEDs by drone to cardiac arrests outside hospital have been conducted, and that regulatory barriers exist, including limits on flights beyond visual line of sight.
Proposed test
The UK project built a concept of operations, equipped a drone with satellite-enabled technology and ran a three-week flight test programme with an AED attached to a parachute, ending in a simulated cardiac arrest with lay responders. A study of real arrests would have to measure the time to first shock and survival, which this project did not.

Objections

  • The authors say further research is needed before routine use of this technology.
  • The test was a simulated cardiac arrest in a remote location with six flights; it measured flight and delivery times and no patient outcome.
  • Flights beyond visual line of sight face regulatory limits, which the project aimed to help address.

Claims and evidence

No claims are published for this idea yet.

Record details

Record id
cardio:idea-drone-aed-delivery
Content hash
06101fe1a905aad6f19db6ac3f6d0cb769d1d8da19ec4980343de38371ab8cd2