A new national defibrillator database is expected to save lives when it is launched next spring.
The database by the NHS, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and Microsoft has been welcomed by the North West Ambulance Service.
The partnership aims to map the life-saving devices so they can be made readily available for every out- of-hospital cardiac arrest in the UK.
Defibrillators are small machines which can ‘shock’ a person’s heart into restarting after a cardiac arrest.
If this can be done in the first few minutes, patients have a 60-70 per cent chance of making a full recovery. They are easy to use, easy to carry and they won’t deliver a shock unless it is required. There is no clinical training required to be able to use the machine.