In Trollhättan, Sweden, an autonomous drone with a defibrillator has helped save the life of a 71-year-old man.

Everdrone’s Emergency Medical Aerial Delivery service (EMADE), a link in the chain of life-saving measures of Region Västra Götaland, Sweden, was put to the test in December.

In the Swedish city of Trollhättan, a 71-year-old man was shovelling snow in his driveway when he suffered an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA).

Thanks to the combination of an immediate emergency call, the quick actions of passerby Dr Mustafa Ali and the swift delivery of an Automated External Defibrillator (AED), lifesaving measures through defibrillation could be initiated before the arrival of the ambulance, and his life was saved.

“This is a truly revolutionary technology that needs to be implemented all over”, says the patient who now has made a full recovery,” says the 71-year-old patient, who has made a full recovery.

He added: “I can’t put into words how thankful I am to this new technology and the speedy delivery of the defibrillator. If it wasn’t for the drone I probably wouldn’t be here.”

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For Dr Mustafa Ali the experience was just as gratifying, despite the gravity of the situation.

“I was on my way to work at the local hospital when I looked out the car window and saw a man collapsed in his driveway”, says Dr Ali. “I immediately understood that something was wrong and rushed to help.

“The man had no pulse, so I started doing CPR while asking another bystander to call 112 (the Swedish emergency number). Just minutes later, I saw something flying above my head. It was a drone with a defibrillator!”

275,000 patients in Europe and 350,000 in the US, suffer from OHCA annually. Approximately 70% occur in private homes without AEDs on site, and ambulance response times are often too long to save the life of the patient. The chance of survival decreases by 7–10% with each minute following the collapse, and consequently, the current survival rate among OHCA patients is around 10%.

Everdrone’s airborne AED delivery service can currently reach 200,000 residents in Sweden and is expected to expand to more locations in Europe during 2022.

The drone with a defibrillator system has been established to cut response times and the full study on its effectiveness is published in the European Heart Journal.

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