Cardiac arrest & resuscitation
Cost-effectiveness of drone-delivered automated external defibrillators for cardiac arrest
Authors' conclusion
Drone-delivered AEDs were associated with reductions in response time, mortality and morbidity, and were found to be highly cost-effective relative to standard ambulance response with no drones.
Study context
- Population
- Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCAs) in Ontario, Canada over 10 years
- Participants
- 22,017 OHCAs
- Comparison
- Drone-delivered automated external defibrillators (AEDs) vs standard ambulance response
- Outcome
- Cost-effectiveness (cost per QALY gained)
Methodological detailsmachine learning, optimization, Markov microsimulation model
- Machine learning
- Optimization
- Markov microsimulation model
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Cost-effectiveness
Networks on the cost-QALY efficient frontier
20
Smallest non-dominated drone network (20 drones), cost per QALY gained
$20,912
Further findings
- Response time — Standard care
- mean 6 min 21 s
- Survival to hospital discharge — Standard care
- 8.4%
- Response time — Average drone response times on the efficient frontier shorter than standard care
- 32% to 71%
- Survival to hospital discharge — Increase across the 20 drone networks
- 21% to 46%
Shockable and witnessed populations (subgroup)
- Cost-effectiveness even greater
Sensitivity analyses
- Results robust to changes in modelling assumptions
Original publication
Cost-effectiveness of drone-delivered automated external defibrillators for cardiac arrest. Resuscitation. Published 17 February 2025. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →