‘Ambulance Drone’ Prototype Unveiled in Holland
October 28th, 2014Via: AFP:
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,” Momont, 23, said at the TU Delft University.
“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,” he said in a statement.
“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.”
Painted in emergency services yellow and driven by six propellers, the drone can carry a four kilogramme load — in this case a defibrillator.
It tracks emergency mobile calls and uses the GPS to navigate.
Once at the scene, an operator, like a paramedic, can watch, talk and instruct those helping the victim by using an on-board camera connected to a control room via a livestream webcam.
The prototype has already attracted the interest of emergency services including that of Amsterdam, the Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad said.
Am I missing something here? How does the paramedic magically appear at the patient’s side to actually use the defibrillator, when the whole problem is the long response time of emergency services? That’s not really something you’d want a random passerby to be doing.
Admittedly there is an issue with the lack of a paramedic, but I love the general concept.
One drone to shoot you down and another to resuscitate you.
I’m sure they could send a robotic paramedic to help revive you and get you back to your cage/workstation.