Delivery Drone Helps Save Heart Attack Victim

An emergency medical aerial delivery drone like this one, helped save a life in Sweden. [Courtesy Everdrone]

An automated delivery drone has played an unprecedented part in saving a victim of a life-threatening heart attack, according to the drone manufacturer. 

The rescue took place last month in Trollhattan, Sweden, when physician Mustafa Ali came upon a 71-year-old man who had collapsed in his driveway while shoveling snow. Dr. Ali had been driving to a nearby hospital.  

“I immediately understood that something was wrong and rushed to help,” he told Everdrone in a press release. “The man had no pulse, so I started doing CPR.”

He asked a bystander to call an ambulance. “Just minutes later, I saw something flying above my head,” Ali told Everdrone. “It was a drone with a defibrillator.”

The drone successfully deployed a small defibrillator and Ali used it to treat the man before an ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital. 

“This is an excellent real-world example of how Everdrone’s cutting-edge drone technology, fully integrated with emergency dispatch, can minimize the time for access to life-saving [emergency medical aerial delivery] equipment”, said Everdrone CEO Mats Sällström in the press release.

Everdrone says its service currently is within reach of about 200,000 residents in Sweden and is expected to expand elsewhere in Europe later this year. 

Thom is a former senior editor for FLYING. Previously, his freelance reporting appeared in aviation industry magazines. Thom also spent three decades as a TV and digital journalist at CNN’s bureaus in Washington and Atlanta, eventually specializing in aviation. He has reported from air shows in Oshkosh, Farnborough and Paris. Follow Thom on Twitter @thompatterson.

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