The Australian Resuscitation Council agrees: in 2006, the council demanded that defibrillators be added to the standard emergency plan of businesses throughout Australia. In other words, business owners and employers throughout the country should have defibrillators on site in the case of an emergency. But public defibrillators in Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane often end up doing little good, whether due to insufficient training of employees and civilians on the scene or because the devices have been allowed to stagnate and run out of battery power over the years.
APL Healthcare, one of Australia’s most noted manufacturers of healthcare supplies, is fighting to advance the mission of the Australian Resuscitation Council and to save lives along the way. The company not only sells defibrillator storage cabinets and defibrillator devices to healthcare facilities throughout the country, but is also pushing for the concept of commonplace and well-maintained defibrillators in Melbourne and beyond.
Solving the Problems of Defibrillators in Public Locations
While the Australian Resuscitation Council may have advocated for the public presence of defibrillators in Brisbane and other Australian areas, that provision is largely useless if the defibrillators in question are not consistently maintained and their batteries regularly replaced or recharged. Business owners can hardly be blamed for dead defibrillators: beyond ambulances and hospital emergency rooms, these devices certainly do not see frequent or regular use (thankfully), and checking the batteries of a defibrillator is therefore a task that often is forgotten or ignored in busy public-oriented businesses likes stores or restaurants.
APL Healthcare has designed its defibrillators with this “out of sight, out of mind” mentality in mind. APL defibrillators (or AEDS, short for “automatic external defibrillator”) often come with an easy to read battery indicator and a self-test function that allows the device to consistently and regularly check its own power supply. If the battery is still sufficient, nothing happens: the defibrillator shuts down until the next test. If the battery is low, the defibrillator alerts nearby users to the insufficient charge.
The hope with this innovation is that business owners and employees will be more vigilant about changing the batteries of their defibrillators. As has been proven over years of beeping smoke detectors, sometimes, the best way to call attention to a diminishing battery charge is with a loud and irritating sound, and that is precisely what APL Healthcare defibrillators emit when their charge falls below a certain point.
Another reason that public defibrillators often fail is because, when someone’s heart stops in a busy public spot, no one in the area is trained to use the device. APL Healthcare defibrillators solve this issue too, using support icons and voice prompts to guide an operator in an easy to follow string of steps.