Drone Delivery Canada (DDC) has completed phase one of its On The Fly Pilot with Peel Region Paramedics, surrounding testing with Automated External Defibrillatorn (AED). The company states it achieved a 100 per cent success rate in the utilization of its drone platform to enable reduced response time.
“This partnership between DDC and Peel Regional Paramedic Services is ground breaking… We look forward to the next phase to bring this vertical closer to commercialization,” said Michael Zahra, CEO of Drone Delivery Canada.
The pilot program was designed to determine the effectiveness of delivery of an AED via drone versus a traditional ambulance. Phase one of the pilot consisted of simulating 911 emergency calls in the Township of Caledon in the Region of Peel dispatching DDC’s Sparrow drone equipped with specialized first responder payload that included an automated external defibrillator.
The delivery time of the drone was then compared against the traditional dispatching of first responder paramedics. Several staged 911 calls were then executed and, in all cases, DDC’s Sparrow drone arrived on-site ahead of the traditional first responder vehicles.
“Phase one of our research was an impressive success,” said Dr. Sheldon Cheskes, medical director at Sunnybrook Centre for Prehospital Medicine and the principal investigator of the AED on the Fly Pilot Research program. “We were able to demonstrate that drone technology to deliver AED’s for cardiac arrest is not only feasible but has the potential to reduce response times and improve outcomes from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. We will continue to work with DDC to ensure a simple and smooth transition from drone landing to bystander retrieval and use of an AED moving forward.”
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