The drones are coming.
In the United States, they are many programs exploring the use of pilotless aircraft to provide remedies for drug overdoses and major trauma or potential drowning rescues.
One of the first such systems is In Manatee County, where Tampa General Hospital and Archer First Response Systems can deliver an automated external defibrillator, a tourniquet and Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose.
The program, which began in May, initially covers a 7-square-mile area in Manatee, and EMS dispatchers deploy the drones, which are monitored by drone pilots.
The system is one of a growing number of efforts by public safety and health care organizations across the country to use drones to speed up lifesaving treatment in situations in which every second counts.
More than 356,000 people have a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital setting every year in the United States, according to the American Heart Association. Most people are at home when it happens, and about 90% die because they don’t get immediate help from first responders or bystanders. Every minute that passes without medical intervention decreases the odds of survival by 10%.
Unlike a heart attack, which occurs when blood flow to the heart is blocked, a cardiac arrest happens when a heart malfunction causes it to stop beating, typically because of an arrhythmia or an electrical problem. Eighty percent of cardiac arrests start as heart attacks. The only way to get the heart restarted is with CPR and a defibrillator.
Also, there were nearly 108,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2022, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
A 2017 study found it takes an emergency medical services unit 7 minutes, on average, to arrive on the scene following a 911 call, though response times vary considerably by region, and rural wait times can be much longer.
A Swedish study published in The Lancet in 2023 compared the response times between drones and ambulances for suspected cardiac arrest in 58 deployments in an area of about 200,000 people. It found that drones beat the ambulance to the scene two-thirds of the time, by a median of 3 minutes and 14 seconds.
As of early July, the Manatee program hadn’t yet deployed any drones, said Gordon Folkes, the founder and chief executive of AFRS, which develops and deploys emergency drone logistics systems. One request in June to send a drone to an overdose couldn’t be fulfilled because of a violent thunderstorm, Folkes said.
In the testing area, which covers about 7,000 residents, Folkes estimates that 10 to 15 drones might be deployed each year.
“The bread and butter for these systems is suburban areas” like Manatee County that are well-populated and where the drones have the advantage of being able to avoid traffic congestion, Folkes said.
According to Tampa General, AFRS utilizes Freefly Systems AltaX unmanned aircraft equipped with a certified parachute recovery system, a receiver, onboard computer and cell modem. The system is installed at the Manatee County EMS Lakewood Ranch Station on Malachite Drive.
When an individual in the coverage area calls 911 with reports of cardiac arrest, opioid overdose or trauma, the drone is expected to arrive at the scene between 1 minute, 45 seconds and 2 minutes 10 seconds, the hospital said.
A dispatch operator will talk the caller through the application of the equipment while traditional emergency vehicles are en route.
Tampa General and Archer FRS briefed the Manatee County Commission on the status of the program at a public meeting April 23, and commissioners were overwhelmingly supportive.
“This is an amazing opportunity to be on the cutting edge of technology in emergency response,” said Commission Chair Mike Rahn.
The service is available at no cost to Manatee residents and will be under evaluation through next summer, the county says.
Other states’ drone programs
Starting in September, if someone in Clemmons, North Carolina, calls 911 to report a cardiac arrest, the first responder on the scene may be a drone carrying an AED.
“The idea is for the drone to get there several minutes before first responders,” such as an emergency medical technician or an ambulance, said Daniel Crews, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office in Forsyth County, where Clemmons is located.
The sheriff’s office is partnering on the project with local emergency services, the Clinical Research Institute at Duke University, and the drone consulting firm Hovecon. “The ultimate goal is to save lives and improve life expectancy for someone experiencing a cardiac episode,” Crews said.
“We’ve never been able to move the needle for cardiac arrest in private settings, and this technology could meet that need,” said Monique Anderson Starks, a cardiologist and associate professor of medicine at Duke University.
Starks is leading pilot studies in Forsyth County and James City County, Virginia, to test whether drone AED delivery can improve treatment response times. The work is funded by a four-year grant from the American Heart Association.
Elsewhere, the New York Police Department plans to drop emergency flotation devices to struggling swimmers at local beaches. In Chula Vista, California, a police drone was able to pinpoint the location of a burning car, and then officers pulled the driver out, said Sgt. Tony Molina.
Rescue personnel have used drones to locate people who wander away from nursing homes, said James Augustine, a spokesperson for the American College of Emergency Physicians who is the medical director for the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
FAA standard needed
In the United States, one hurdle for drone programs is that the Federal Aviation Administration typically requires that drones be operated within the operators’ visual line of sight. In May, when Congress passed the FAA reauthorization bill, it gave the FAA four months to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking on drone operations beyond the visual line of sight.
“The FAA is focused on developing standard rules to make [Beyond Visual Line of Sight] operations routine, scalable, and economically viable,” said Rick Breitenfeldt, an FAA spokesperson.
Some civil liberties groups are concerned that the FAA’s new rules may not provide enough protection from drone cameras for people on the ground.
Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, acknowledged the benefits of using drones in emergency situations but said there are issues that need to be addressed.
“The concern is that the FAA is going to significantly loosen the reins of drones without any significant privacy protections,” he said.
Health News Florida's Rick Mayer contributed to this report.
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