Commentary and conceptsThe drone ambulance [A-UAS]: golden bullet or just a blank?☆
Section snippets
Current issues in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest [OHCA]
Many lives can be saved by defibrillation within the first minutes after sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrest [OHCA] [1], [2], [3], [4]. This potential for saving lives and improving long-term outcome is one of the main reasons for many countries to support a large network of Emergency Medical Services [EMS] at high operational costs. Still, these EMS services −even with inclusion of other ‘first responders’ (police, fire brigade)- most often do not arrive within the first critical 5–10 min
Conclusion
A drone ambulance is a potentially feasible and cost-efficient way of saving many lives and quality-adjusted life years. The barriers to effective prototype development and field testing are huge but manageable. We invite research groups around the world to join the effort.
Author contribution and declaration of interests
None of the authors has any conflict of interest to declare.
All authors were actively involved in the writing and/or revisions of this concept paper. The authors declare there are no personal financial conflicts of interest relevant to this paper. PVDV is an active member of the European Resuscitation Council.
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A Spanish translated version of the abstract of this article appears as Appendixi n the final online version at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2017.04.037.