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"Ambulance Drone" Prototype Unveiled In Holland
schwit1 writes with news about a flying defibrillator designed by a Dutch student. A Dutch-based student on Tuesday unveiled a prototype of an "ambulance drone", a flying defibrillator able to reach heart attack victims within precious life-saving minutes. Developed by Belgian engineering graduate Alec Momont, it can fly at speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour (60 miles per hour). "Around 800,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest in the European Union every year and only 8.0 percent survive, the main reason for this is the relatively long response time of emergency services of around 10 minutes, while brain death and fatalities occur with four to six minutes,"
Interesting possibilities.
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What could possibly go wrong?
As I understand it cellular death doesn't actually occur due to oxygen starvation for about an hour. It seems that the four to six minute mark actually causes apoptosis when oxygen is returned after that interval.
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
Sure hope that's a typo, or heart attacks are really fatal over there.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"The ambulance drone can get a defibrillator to a patient within a 12 square kilometre (4.6 square miles) zone within a minute, reducing the chance of survival from 8 percent to 80 percent."
Not usually what you're looking for in this type of drone.
But as well as this, there needs to be a bigger effort made to have automatic defibrillators widely available. They're relatively reliable and easy to use yet I've only ever seen them once (in a shopping mall). Drones aren't going to be all that much help indoors without huge improvements in machine vision and navigation, but all the same they might well prove to be a godsend for people in isolated areas.*
*In my experience, large public gatherings held outdoors nearly always have at least one ambulance present.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Flying Tasers buzzing around all over the place. Just the approaching noise will be impressive.....zzzzzzZZZZZZZAAP!
I can hear the cop now, *I thought he was having a heart attack*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
In San Francisco they could deliver buttplugs.
You think that SWATting someone is bad? Just wait until this comes out.
Here in the Netherlands the problem is not in getting an AED on the site, but to find someone who can apply it. There are many people trained in using AED's and we here in the Netherlands possibly have the highest density of AED's, and although there is an elobrate system to call trained people to a person with a cardiac arrest, the problem is still in getting enough volunteers to join in. It is no use to have an AED within 200 meters from every house, if you don't have people who can apply them. AED's are not difficult to use, but in a case of emergencie, you need someone who can keep his/her head calm and follow the instructions.
A killer app for drones.
Simon's Rock College
A flying little sireny drone is gonna swoop out of the air, give me the heimlich and perform CPR with its rotors on my face?
As opposed to self-serve defibrillators in former phone booths? How does this make any sense? Oh I see, RC quadcopters/tricopters are the 3D printers of 2014?
..would require an opening for the drone to enter a home, the ability to smash through windows, etc. Relying on a person's phonecall won't get you a great increase in percentage saved - you need a life-alert style mechanism or an implant to monitor the person for peak survival rates to even be attainable. Personally the fear of some asshole steeling a taser-drone and tasing me in my sleep would outweigh the benefits of being saved by one if the person/software happens to work (which realistically will happen maybe 10% of the time initially).
Given the huge hurdles that airspace administrators are presently placing in the way of *any* non-recreational use of drones (witness the way the FAA has repeatedly tried to shut down those being used for search-and-rescue activities), can you possibly imagine the red-tape involved in getting clearance to launch one of these life-saving drones?
By the time the paperwork was done, the corpse would have already rotted away to just bones and parchment-like skin.
Governments talk about the "huge potential" of drones -- but the regulators say "no, no... you can't do that".
Crazy, crazy, crazy!
When will people learn that a cardiac arrest is NOT the same event as a heart attack!!!!
A heart attack is when an artery within the heart muscle is blocked. A cardiac arrest is when the heart stops beating. The vast majority of heart attack victims are well and truly awake throughout the whole event.
Defibrillators are what makes a big difference in potential survival froma cardiac arrest, but won't do a damn thing if the heart attack victim is conscious. Rapid transport to an emergency room for therapy that can restore/preserve cardiac blood flow is what is most needed if the victim is maintaining life signs.
When it rains, snows, storms, is windy, etc a drone is useless. It is better to not buy these drones and rely on them instead of having a network of available devices in case of emergency. Not that the idea has not advantages, but it is not a one-size fits all answer to the problem neither. At a 19 000$ tag price plus operation costs, you must think twice if it worth the expense vs a terresterial network of AED available for emergency.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Ken Jeong's AMA video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXcsHoQMGqc
"As opposed to self-serve defibrillators in former phone booths?"
I would imagine defibrillators in such locations would vanish quite quickly, too many people are morons and will steal anything that isn't bolted down on the off chance they can sell it or just chuck it into a river to see what it does (probably nothing). I've seen actual hardened public phones in average neighborhoods with their books shredded and the phone receiver ripped out. Most of the self serve defibrillators currently in public areas are right next to employees of the business/government officer where they are located and anyone attempting to snatch/destroy it would very likely trigger a call to security/police. A drone defibrillator is probably an attempt to bridge the gap, it stays in a secured location until sent out to a remote location (closely followed by EMS/Police). That way the devices are much more likely to be actually used instead of being wasted by the grade school dropouts.
my training as an on-road paramedic (whose been to actual arrests) taught me to put the sticky pads on right of the sternum margin mid clavicular line above the nipple, and mid axialliary midline - just like the pictures on the pads..
So why did this chick not do this?
Maybe this is why this is a great idea but might not work....
People are really dumb!
this was the first thing I thought of.
Worked for one of the major AED manufacturers. Dirty little secret is the ones sold for non-clinical (hospital, etc) use result in a positive outcome about 7% of the time. The positve outcomes are often not that positive either.