John Anderson is chief technology officer for Heartsine Inc., a U.S. company with its portable defibrillator R&D and manufacturing in Northern Ireland. For more information, visit www.heartsine.com.
In a real-life cardiac arrest situation, reaction time and efficacy of the basic life support (BLS) administered can mean the difference between life and death to a patient. Therefore, development of user-friendly, effective and lightweight defibrillators has been vital in the improvement of out-of-hospital survival rates over the past 30 years.