Drones can be a life saving tool as first responders for cardiac arrest patients. Drone Delivery Canada (DDC) announced that it has successfully completed phase one of its AED (automated external defibrillator) On The Fly Pilot with Peel Region Paramedics and proved that utilizing DDC’s proprietary drone delivery platform to enable rapid first responder technology via drone produces reduced response time.
The Pilot was conducted in order to determine the effectiveness of delivery of an AED via drone versus a traditional ambulance. In the Township of Caledon in the Region of Peel- phase one of the pilot commenced with simulation of a 911 emergency call, dispatching DDC’s Sparrow drone equipped with specialized first responder payload that included an automated external defibrillator. The delivery time of the drone was then compared with the conventional dispatching of first responder paramedics. Several staged 911 calls were then executed and, in all cases, DDC’s Sparrow drone arrived on-site ahead of the traditional first responder vehicles. DDC’s Sparrow was able to reduce response times on all calls making the pilot a great success.
Michael Zahra, CEO of Drone Delivery Canada commented, “This partnership between DDC and Peel Regional Paramedic Services is ground breaking. The program utilizes DDC’s proprietary drone delivery platform to enable rapid first responder technology via drone with the goal to reduce response time and potentially save lives. We look forward to the next phase to bring this vertical closer to commercialization.”
In a video on the company’s website the Dr. Sheldon Cheskes Medical Director at Sunnybrook Centre for Prehospital Medicine and the Principal Investigator of the AED on the Fly Pilot Research program recognised DDC as a leader in Drone services saying that they had been working on the idea of combining DDC’s drone technology with their medical expertise to make this project a reality. They were looking for Drone which could carry an AED and land with precision at the designated area in the rural community.
Dr. Sheldon Cheskes, commented “Phase 1 of our research was an impressive success. We were able to demonstrate that drone technology to deliver AED’s for cardiac arrest is not only feasible but has the potential to reduce response times and improve outcomes from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.”
Dr. Cheskes said now they need to work on fine tuning the process by reducing the Drone flying time and assisting a bystander on the scene to take the AED from the drone to the patient by making it as simple as possible.
Dr. Cheskes added. “Given the fact that cardiac survival drops by 10% every minute of delay in cardiac arrest response time, getting a Drone to do this within 5 minutes instead of the regular 10 minutes in a rural scenario I reduce the delay by 50% and that is quite inspiring.”
Drone Delivery Canada is a drone technology company focused on the design, development and implementation of its proprietary logistics software platform, using drones. The Company’s platform will be used as Software as a Service (SaaS) for government and corporate organizations.