Which city is the first in the U.S. to send drones with defibrillators on 911 calls?

Drones have become an increasingly helpful tool for law enforcement and first responders. The latest use case? Deploying defibrillator-equipped drones when someone calls 911. Clemmons, N.C., is the first city to put this idea into practice with a new study.

For the study, drones carrying automated external defibrillators (AEDs) will launch as soon as a 911 call for a cardiac arrest comes in. The current average for 911 response times to the caller’s location is 6 to 7 minutes, but according to Duke Health cardiologist and study lead Monique Starks, the drone can be on the scene in about 4 minutes. In the case of a cardiac arrest, the victim needs to receive help within the first 10 minutes, so this decrease in response time could save lives.

In the U.S., “[if] a patient can be shocked within two to five minutes, we could see survival of 50 to 70 percent, but we see survival of 10 percent, and that’s because we largely rely on first responders and EMS getting to the scene before an AED is available,” Starks said. “We want to change that dynamic. We want to get that AED to the bystander, so that they can rapidly shock a cardiac arrest patient to help them survive.”