Research conducted by a team from King's College London suggests that drones used to deliver opioid overdose reversal kits could reach patients faster than ambulances, thus promising to improve survival rates.

Using data from real-world fatal opioid overdoses, the team determined that commercial-off-the-shelf drones could have reached 78% of cases within seven minutes — which is the standard time for the arrival of emergency services for such calls in England — a dramatic increase on the 14% reached by ambulances.

Source: HeroTech8

Additional experiments performed by the King’s College London team suggest that increasing the speed of drones and designating a cargo cradle to transport Naloxone — a drug that reverses or blocks the effects of opioids and restores normal breathing — on such drones could mean a reported 98% of overdose cases could be reached within seven minutes.

This, according to the researchers, is an improvement on the seven minutes that ambulances strive for but that are oftentimes hampered by other factors such as wait times and the location of the patient.

Further, survival rates for those who receive drone deliveries of opioid reversal kits hinge on the presence of a bystander who can administer the Naloxone.

An article detailing the team’s findings, "An evaluation of naloxone transit for opioid overdose using drones: A case study using real-world coroner data," appears in the journal Addiction.