Defibrillator drones are four times faster than ambulances

A new study has shown that a drone can be dispatched and arrive at the scene of an emergency over four times faster than an ambulance.

With less than 10 percent of people surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, the time it takes to get a defibrillator to a patient can be the difference between life and death. A new study from a team in Sweden has shown that a drone can transport an automated external defibrillator (AED) over four times more quickly than an ambulance.

From the Ambulance Drone to the Defikopter, we have seen several prototype drones designed for emergency AED transportation. Most recently, a Swedish start-up called FlyPulsedeveloped a complete emergency service drone delivery system, and a trial study has just been released comparing its response time to that of traditional emergency medical services (EMS).

The study performed 18 flights, with a median flight distance of two miles (3.2 km) for the drone that is designed to be automatically launched from an emergency services call center. Across the test flights the time from dispatch to arrival for the drone was significantly faster than EMS. The median time it took for the drone to reach its destination was 5 minutes and 21 seconds, versus the 22 minutes for EMS.