Project Description
AEDs, short for Automated External Defibrillators, were made to save the lives of people. They contain a computer to assist people with minimal medical knowledge and are available in public areas so that anyone could save a life anywhere. However, it’s unknown where these devices are located. Being used for situations where every second counts, the lack of geo-information decreases the efficiency of the AEDs.
The challenge
How can we create a tool which helps people in emergencies to find the nearest AED?
The solution
With AED4EU we’ve build an application that uses crowd-sourced information. Within the original app users could easily upload the location of an AED that they’ve found by sending an picture combined with their GPS based location. The AEDs were confirmed by volunteers that would check the images and by other users of the app that could confirm on the spot if the device was indeed on that location. The collected AEDs were then shown on a digital map and could also be found using the app’s search function which automaticly showed the nearest AEDs. The AED4EU app has now been integrated in the app for the Dutch Red Cross.
What did we do?
When we started the project of AED4EU we found out that finding a AED is quite difficult. Not just because a lot of AEDs are inside a building, but also because there was no public database of the location of these AEDs. Our question was therefore not just how to find the AEDs, but also how to locate them. We started working together with a software development company to build a crowdsourcing solution to identify and search for AEDs.
There are approximately between 40.000 and 60.000 AEDs in the Netherlands, of which 22.000 have been identified since 2009. Every week 300 people have a cardiac arrest outside the hospital. The survival of a victim increases when chest compressions are started and an AED is used within six minutes.
