Proposed defibrillator register bill "could save lives"

People urgently looking for a defibrillator would be better able to find the nearest one if a proposed member's bill at the Scottish Parliament becomes law.

Glasgow Labour MSP Anas Sarwar has opened a consultation on whether to legislate to require all defibrillators, officially automated external defibrillators or AEDs, to be registered.

At present the Scottish Ambulance Service encourages all AEDs to be registered via The Circuit, a national defibrillator network created in partnership with the British Heart Foundation and Microsoft. This allows the ambulance service to identify the nearest AED to the location of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. But there is no legal requirement for AEDs to be registered, and this can mean that the ambulance service directs a bystander to a more remote registered AED because it is unaware of a nearer, unregistered, one; or even that it does not know where there is one in the vicinity.

Mr Sarwar says his bill would therefore potentially significantly reduce the time involved in getting an AED to the scene and, in turn, improve cardiac arrest survival rates.

He adds that it would also have allow AEDs "to be placed in a more strategic way than at present across Scotland. By locating and mapping current AEDs, we can identify areas which lack AEDs within an accessible distance, and, conversely, identify areas which already have a high concentration of AEDs and where adding more would be of limited value".

Click here to access the consultation. Responses are invited until 25 May 2020.