Drone Aids EMS Response in Rural Canada

Canada’s Renfrew County is 7,000 square miles of cottage country and rugged forests located northeast of Toronto. The county’s relative lack of roads and small population base—100,000 in winter, up to 200,000 in summer—means that EMS and fire resources are thinly spread.

This is why the Renfrew County Paramedic Service (RCPS) has taken to flying an Indro Robotics quadcopter to aid in its daily duties. Capable of carrying up to 4.4 pounds of payload, the RCPS drone comes with an onboard TV camera and video downlink to help paramedics assess accident scenes from a safe overhead perspective. It can also be used to search for injured parties lost in the bush, and to ferry in EpiPens and other medical devices to incident scenes before human paramedics have a chance to arrive by road.

The RCPS drone has even helped protect first responders after a September 2015 triple homicide at a house in Wilno, Ontario.

“Using our camera-equipped drone outside the house, we were able to check out the crime scene for the shooter before sending officers in,” says RCPS Chief Mike Nolan. “We used the drone to look in the windows, under the building, and inside the garage.”

Not only did the drone let the paramedics determine that the shooter had left, but they were also able to see where the victim was and what condition they were in.

“This gave the police extremely useful safety and medical information as they entered the building,” says Nolan.

Nolan has been interested in using drones for EMS ever since he discovered one of his staff’s hidden capabilities a few years ago.

“I learned that our EMT James Power had flown UAVs for the Canadian military in Afghanistan,” he says. “I could see how useful it would be for the RCPS to have a camera-equipped drone of our own; especially given how rugged and remote much of our county is.”

Initially, Nolan bought a consumer-grade drone out of his own pocket for Power to fly. It proved the worth of the concept so quickly, that the RCPS opted to purchase a professional-quality quadcopter from Indro Robotics.

Using this drone, “I can give them a live feed of what’s actually going on with their medics or with their first responders,” says James Power in an interview with CTV News. “That gives them better command and control over whatever scene they might be engaged in.”

The RCPS’s current four-prop unit is tough enough for regular EMS use, even in Canada’s cold climate. It is based upon Indro Robotics’ Scout Mkiii Flexible Multi-Rotor Platform. Built on a lightweight carbon fiber airframe, the Scout Mkiii can be configured as a four-prop or even eight-prop drone. Besides the RCPS, this model of drone has been used for various missions by the Canadian Department of National Defense, the RCMP, several fire departments in British Columbia, and even the United Nations.

For Nolan, having a drone that can work ahead of first responders is a major plus.

“Not only can we fly in to see where someone is in the bush, but we can also use the drone to find the nearest driveable paths in for our rescue vehicles,” he says. “So we save time in finding the victim, and in figuring out how to get them to the hospital.”

For its part, Indro Robotics also sees major rewards in supporting RCPS’ rescue efforts. “The benefit to us is working with the first responders,” says Indro Robotics CEO Philip Reece in an interview with CTV News. “We get it into their hands and then they come back to us and say ‘this would be great if it could do this.’ So we take it back to our engineering department, and we make it do that.”

Today, RCPS flies its drone under a special license issued by Transport Canada—Canada’s version of the FAA. The success the project has enjoyed to date has Chief Nolan dreaming of further applications.

“I can see equipping the drone with a portable defibrillator, so that we can fly it in with instructions to a remote incident scene,” he told EMS World. “In this way, people there could begin treatment before the ambulance arrives, increasing the victim’s chances of survival.”

Renfrew County’s success is also catching the attention of nearby Hastings County, which already uses a 4-wheel Polaris ATV to bring out patients from the bush. “We have been consulting with Chief Nolan about deploying our own UAV,” says Hastings County Acting Chief John O’Donnell. “Having a drone is working so well for them, that we are planning to follow suit.”

RCPS’ quadcopter “has proven that a drone can be a critically useful tool for EMS and other first responders,” says Nolan.

James Careless is a freelance writer with extensive experience covering computer technologies.