A new pilot program aims to help EMS respond quicker, not act as a replacement. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. When they aren't baffling the public or grounding wildfire planes, drones have some pretty solid uses. Apart from unnecessarily fast same-day deliveries, the pilotless aircrafts may soon become a lifesaving emergency response tool . A collaborative team of health experts, community organizations, and universities are in the middle of a pilot program using drones and automated external defibrillators (AEDs).

Drones delivering defibrillators consistently outperform ambulances in the race to get life-saving treatment to people who have experienced heart failure, according to a landmark new trial in Sweden. Time is critical when it comes to reviving patients who have gone into cardiac arrest. Using a defibrillator to apply an electrical shock to a heart within 3 to 5 minutes of it stopping can lead to survival rates of up to 70 per cent. Yet fewer than 2 per cent of patients receive such treatment before emergency services arrive, with each minute of delay after the patient's heart has stopped reducing the probability of survival by 10 per cent. To see whether drones could cut the time taken to get defibrillators to collapsed patients, Andreas Claesson at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and his colleagues launched a collaborative project with drone operator Everdrone and emergency services in western Sweden where drones and ambulances were dispatched to each suspected case of cardiac arrest. Across the 55 cases, drones were quicker than ambulances 67 per cent of the time, and by an average of 3 minutes and 14 seconds.

A new cardiac arrest-detecting AI has been revealed. If this health technology is proven effective, it can reduce death cases caused by sudden heart dysfunction. Natalia Trayanova, the senior author of the latest study, explained that more than 20% of the deaths across the world are caused by cardiac arrest (cardiac arrhythmias). Because of this, they decided to create a new artificial intelligence that can detect if an individual is about to have heart failure. Now, will this new cardia arrest-detecting AI help reduce cardiac arrest deaths?

Earlier this year, a 71-year-old man in the Swedish city of Trollhattan was shovelling snow outside his house when he suffered a cardiac arrest -- his heart suddenly stopped beating. A passing doctor rushed to help and began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to keep blood and oxygen flowing to his brain and other vital organs, while a bystander called for an ambulance. It was a race against time. With no pulse, the man's heart needed to be shocked back into life using a defibrillator. The drone took just three minutes to arrive, reaching the patient well ahead of paramedics.

A 71-year-old Swedish man who suffered a heart attack while shoveling snow in his driveway was saved by an unlikely hero - a delivery drone. Sven, a retiree who asked for his last name to be withheld, collapsed outside his home in the western town of Trollhättan in early December. Within moments of receiving the call from Sven's wife, emergency services dispatched the unmanned aerial vehicle carrying an AED, or automated external defibrillator, which arrived in less than four minutes. The system, called Emergency Medical Aerial Delivery (EMADE), was developed by Everdrones to assist patients within 10 minutes of experiencing cardiac arrest. 'Everything from the first 112 call to the drone getting the signal to start and go took about 15-30 seconds and then the whole process took about three and a half minutes,' Sven told AFP.

A new article published last week in the European Heart Journal discusses the use of drones for delivering life-saving automated external defibrillators (AED) to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) patients. As the study describes, "Early treatment in line with the'chain-of-survival' concept such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation by an automated external defibrillator (AED) prior to ambulance arrival is associated with increased survival. Use of AEDs in the early-cardiac-arrest electrical phase can increase survival rates to up to 50–70%. Although hundreds of thousands of AEDs are available in high-income countries, their accessibility and use are still low." Thus, the investigators of the study designed a system to deploy drones to real-life suspected OHCA patients in order to determine whether this was a viable solution to the accessibility problem.

Artificial intelligence (AI) through machine learning (ML) refers to the simulation of human intelligence with the capacity for achieving goals within computers. In electrophysiology, ML has many applications in electrocardiography, intracardiac mapping and cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs). Remote monitoring (RM) of patients equipped with CIEDs associates the analysis of event reports and calendar-based remote follow-ups (FU). ML applications have allowed for risk stratification, improved arrhythmia localisation and streamlined remote monitoring which may significantly reduce the workload faced by electrophysiologists. To develop a system that automates cardiac implantable electronic devices remote follow-up.

The selection of the Reno-based drone operator Flirtey and its local partners for a national test program aimed at increasing the use of unmanned aircraft will be a "game-changer" for the delivery of emergency medical supplies in the region, backers of the effort say. The 10 sites the U.S. Department of Transportation announced Wednesday include projects ranging from monitoring crops and oil pipelines in North Dakota to applying mosquito-killing treatments in Florida. In northern Nevada, the focus will be on drugs and medical equipment. Flirtey drones already have delivered automated external defibrillators used to jumpstart the hearts of cardiac arrest victims as part of a joint emergency program with first-responders in Reno. The company also anticipates future deliveries of EpiPens to treat severe allergic reactions and Narcan for opioid overdoses.

The space above your head--currently filled with sky, maybe some clouds, and the passing bird or plastic bag--is valuable. Many a company would rather see it filled with drones, saving lives with emergency drugs, delivering items you ordered online, monitoring crops, and handling a bajillion other tasks. But if given free rein, some worry, these quadcopter capitalists might darken the sky with their machines, deafen us with their buzzing, and shower debris on those below when they inevitably collide. To avoid an aerial apocalypse, the FAA has so far taken a restrictive approach to drones. It limits commercial operation by requiring permits and imposing restrictions like banning beyond-line-of-sight flights and nighttime operations.

Scientists have created an'ultra-precise' drone that can deliver packages directly to a person, rather than a location. The DelivAir drone uses GPS to navigate to a user's smartphone, updating its destination throughout its flight until it arrives within visual range. While it is currently still a concept, its designers believe that the drone could be used to deliver life-saving medical supplies in the future. Scientists have created an'ultra-precise' drone that can deliver packages directly to a person, rather than a location. The DelivAir drone uses GPS to navigate to a user's smartphone, updating its destination throughout its flight until it arrives within visual range The drone delivery system uses a two-stage routing process.