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What if the first responder on the scene of a cardiac arrest were a drone carrying an automated external defibrillator?
When every second counts, public safety professionals are increasingly eyeing drones — which can fly 60 miles an hour and don’t get stuck in traffic — to deliver help faster than an ambulance or EMT.
Starting in September, 911 callers in Clemmons, N.C., may see a drone winging its way to those suffering a cardiac arrest. Under a pilot program operated jointly by the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, local emergency services, the Clinical Research Institute at Duke University and drone consulting firm Hovecon, drone pilots from the sheriff’s department will monitor 911 calls and dispatch drones.
The sheriff’s office has approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate within a 2-mile radius of the launch site, beyond the visual line of sight. Upon arrival, a drone will hover 125 feet above the caller’s location and lower an AED complete with verbal instructions.
“We’ve never been able to move the needle for cardiac arrest in private settings, and this technology could meet that need,” said Monique Anderson Starks, a cardiologist and an associate professor of medicine at Duke, who is leading the program. It will eventually operate six drones at six sites in Forsyth County and James City County, Va., that can deliver AEDs, she said.
It’s a critical problem. More than 356,000 people suffer cardiac arrests outside of a hospital setting every year in the United States. About 90 percent die, because they don’t get immediate help. Every minute that passes without medical intervention decreases survival odds by 10 percent.
In the United States, emergency medical services take an average of seven minutes to arrive after a 911 call, one study found, but the time varies considerably by region.
A Swedish study published in the Lancet in 2023 compared the cardiac arrest response times between drones and ambulances in 58 deployments in an area of about 200,000 people. It found that drones beat the ambulances to the scene two-thirds of the time, by a median of three minutes and 14 seconds.
Drones are being tested in other types of medical emergencies, too. In Florida, Tampa General Hospital, Manatee County and Archer First Response Systems began a program in May to deliver not only AEDs by drone but also tourniquets and Narcan, the nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose. The program currently operates in a 1.5-mile radius, within visual line of sight.
In New York City, the police department plans to use drones to drop emergency flotation devices to struggling swimmers at local beaches. Emergency rescuers elsewhere have used drones to locate people who wander away from nursing homes.
One hurdle to these programs spreading has been the FAA’s usual requirement that these airborne devices be used within their operators’ visual line of sight. In May, when Congress passed the FAA reauthorization bill, it gave the FAA four months to issue a proposed rule spelling out requirements for operating beyond the visual line of sight.
“The FAA is focused on developing standard rules to make [beyond visual line of sight] operations routine, scalable and economically viable,” said Rick Breitenfeldt, an FAA spokesman.
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