A new study has found that drones equipped with a portable medical device can help save lives of heart attack patients by reaching the spot four times faster than an ambulance. A team of researchers in Sweden compared the time taken to deliver an automated external defibrillator (AED) using fully autonomous drones for simulated out-of- hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) with emergency medical services (EMS). A drone equipped with an AED, a portable device that checks the heart rhythm and can send an electric shock to the heart to try to restore a normal rhythm.
The drone was equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) and a high-definition camera and integrated with an autopilot software system. It was dispatched for out-of-sight flights to locations where OHCA's were within a 10 kilometer radius from the fire station. Researchers found that the drone arrived more…
