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Swedish investigators sent drones carrying automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to 18 sites where ambulances had previously responded for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. They compared the drones' response times to the response times actually achieved when the real emergency had happened. Two licensed pilots sent GPS destinations and routes to the drones, and a pilot was present at each landing site; however, the flights themselves were autonomous.
From the time of the call notifying the dispatcher of an out-of-hospital arrest, ambulances arrived in a median time of 20 minutes, while drones arrived in a median time of 5 minutes. The median improvement with drones was 16.7 minutes.