Drones were faster than ambulances in delivering an external defibrillator to the site of simulated out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, according to a research letter published in JAMA.
The drones were 16 minutes faster than emergency medical services, the study found.
Swedish researchers built a drone equipped with defibrillators and tested how long it would take a drone to deliver the automatic external defibrillator compared to traditional emergency medical response teams in ambulances.
The drone was placed at a fire station near Stockholm and was dispatched in October to 18 locations in a 6.2 mile radius where out-of-hospital cardiac arrests had occurred between 2006 and 2014.
The drone's median time of arrival was 5 minutes and 21 seconds, while EMS' median time of arrival was 22 minutes.
"Saving 16 minutes is likely to be clinically important," the study authors wrote. "Nonetheless, further test flights, technological development and evaluation of integration with dispatch centers and aviation administrators are needed."