A new pilot project that uses drones to bring life-saving cardiac equipment quickly to patients who suffer heart attacks at home took a step closer to being rolled out, following a successful simulation flight.
The project is being spearheaded by the Digital Hub’s designer in residence, Dr Glenn Curtin, who is a trained medical doctor and has focused on how to get automated external defibrillators (AEDs) rapidly to people in cardiac arrest. He considered other methods of transport, including bicycles, before settling on drones.
The project draws together a number of organisations, including the National Ambulance Service, the Community First Responders programme and the HSE. The trial is being conducted with drone delivery company Manna, with the defibrillators able to easily fit inside the company’s drones.
The simulation flight on Friday was carried out from Manna’s hub in Blanchardstown to an address in a housing estate nearby, about 10 minutes’ drive away. The drone, which has a range of about 20km, brought the defibrillator to the house, dropping it safely into the back garden, in around two minutes. That allowed the Community First Responder to use the defibrillator on the fictitious patient – a 74-year-old man – who recovered and was subsequently brought to hospital.
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Further simulation studies are expected to take place in January, with Dr Curtin hoping to have the pilot programme in place from early in 2025. There are 110 ambulance stations around Ireland that could potentially host a drone for delivering AEDs to the community.
“While the capital costs might be quite high, the cost savings in lives saved and disability, that’s huge,” Dr Curtin said.
Speed is of the utmost importance. Survival for those in cardiac arrest decreases by 10 per cent for every minute, and the average time it takes for an ambulance to reach a patient is 12 minutes.
Ireland is one of the few countries with an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest registry. Between 2,500 and 3,000 cardiac arrests are attended by the Irish emergency services every year, with 70 per cent of these happening at home. The survival rate in the community is 8 per cent.
Prof Joseph Galvin, cardiologist and member of the Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Register (OHCAR) Steering Group, said the project had “great potential” and was something they had been waiting on for a long time.
A previous study carried out in Sweden found drones beat the ambulances to the patient 70 per cent of the time, and shaved about 3.4 minutes off the response time. That success rate would result in more than 900 lives per year saved in Ireland.
“There’s nothing in all of healthcare that comes close in terms of number of lives saved,” said Prof Galvin. “This is radical and has great potential.”
Manna chief executive Bobby Healy said the AEDs could also be sent from any of its bases, which are currently located in Dublin. It already does 100-200 deliveries a day from its Blanchardstown base, delivering food and drink from local businesses.
“It’s a no-brainer because we’re already here, we’re already doing the work to move stuff around quickly to houses – why wouldn’t we do this?” he said.
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