Protecting your AED: Shockingly obvious but often overlooked

By Steve Jelfs, Defibrillation & Resuscitation Consultant

As awareness around heart health and the importance of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) increases, so does the number of AEDs appearing in public places across the UK, Europe and globally. The focus of this awareness is on increasing access and improving survival rates. However, making defibrillators accessible is only part of defibrillator ownership. 

Ensuring AEDs are rescue ready, available and permanently tracked has never been more important. Cold temperatures, moisture, vandalism, reduced daylight and poor monitoring all increase the risk that a defibrillator may not be ready when it’s really needed. 

Every year, there are around 40,000 outside of hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) in the UK and over 350,000 across Europe, with survival rates still averaging below 10% (British Heart Foundation, 2024; European Resuscitation Council, 2021). Ensuring that AEDs are functional and accessible is therefore a key part of the chain of survival recommended by both the Resuscitation Council UK (RCUK) and American Heart Association (AHA).

What does protecting your AED mean?

Protecting your defibrillator means more than just placing it in a cabinet and leaving it until someone might need it.

Protection means ensuring your defibrillator is: 

• Physically protected from impact, vandalism and theft
• Protected from temperature extremes, moisture and condensation
• Operationally protected with regular checks and monitoring
• Digitally protected with accurate location and status data

When placed in a cabinet, your AED might seem as though it’s fully functioning. However, without regular checks and maintenance, it can be easy to miss issues such as battery or pad expiry or internal faults. Failing to pick up on these issues can mean that your defibrillator fails to save a life when its needed.

Key threats to AED readiness

Thinking about the key risks to the safety and readiness of your defibrillator helps to understand why it needs to be protected and how you can ensure its protected so it’s ready when it’s needed most and when seconds count.

1. Environmental damage

AEDs are designed to be robust, but they are not immune to environmental changes such as the temperature and moisture or condensation. Particularly in outdoor cabinets, AEDs are exposed to a range of elements which can affect batteries and pads over time as well as the device itself.

Providing your defibrillator with adequate protection in the form of an outdoor cabinet that keeps your AED at the right temperature and protects it from moisture will ensure it stays functional. In addition, monitoring it regularly will ensure its ready when it’s needed in an emergency. Without protection and monitoring, these issues will only become apparent during an emergency when rescuers realise the defibrillator is not working.

2. Theft, vandalism and unauthorised removal

In the UK, there have been cases of AEDs being stolen from cabinets and have proven difficult to locate due to the absence of tracking systems.

Recently in the UK, several AEDs have been stolen from cabinets and have proved difficult to locate due to the absence of tracking systems. Many community devices are purchased through charity fundraising and are never recovered which leaves the community without protection and making their loss both financially damaging and potentially life threatening.

The risk of theft can be heightened by poor visibility or lighting, lack of alarms or alerts and a lack of tracking once the AED leaves the cabinet.

3. Lack of AED tracking or monitoring

Most AEDs provide visual and audio indicators for pad and battery readiness, but these systems only work if you know where the defibrillator is. Once it’s been removed from its cabinet or permanent location (through theft or use in an emergency) it becomes difficult for guardians to monitor readiness, monitor whether the AED is present in the cabinet and track where the AED has gone. This gap can cause issues for AED management and mean that the device can easily go missing with no way to find out where it is or whether it’s ready to work in an emergency.

4. Poor visibility to emergency services

When an emergency occurs, the first thing responders do is call 999. Emergency services will then direct responders to their nearest AED. However, if emergency services don’t know where the defibrillator is, they will be unable to do this.

The Circuit is a national database of registered defibrillators that’s used by emergency services, so they are able to direct first responders and bystanders to the nearest AED until an ambulance arrives on the scene. An AED that is not correctly registered, the record updated, or the device maintained, will be become invisible when it’s really needed.

Learn more about registering your defibrillator with The Circuit in our blog.

How can you protect your AED?

Most AEDs are designed to be robust and easy to use but they still rely on protection and maintenance to ensure they’re rescue ready in an emergency. Finding out the defibrillator is no longer functioning in an emergency could be life threatening. Protecting your defibrillator involves a combination of actions you can take to ensure its still functioning and available when it’s needed.

Keep your defibrillator in a cabinet

Whether you intend to keep your defibrillator indoors or outdoors, a defibrillator cabinet will protect your device from the elements as well as theft and vandalism. Not only this, but it will also ensure that your defibrillator can be quickly and easily identified and found in an emergency.

If your defibrillator is going to be kept outdoors such as in a community setting, an outdoor cabinet should be weather resistant, include temperature control, be alarmed and be clearly signposted. All of these elements will ensure your defibrillator remains fully functioning and rescue ready at all times.

Alongside protecting your defibrillator from the elements, a cabinet also protects your device from theft and vandalism. Alarmed and locked cabinets are available, making it difficult for thieves to get to your AED undetected, providing another level of protection.

However, a cabinet alone cannot provide complete protection. Once an AED leaves its cabinet, traditional protection measures no longer apply. This is why device-level monitoring and tracking are becoming increasingly important.

Automate protection and readiness

Automated AED monitoring systems can significantly reduce the risks associated with manual AED management. These systems allow you to remotely monitor your defibrillator and track it in real-time which enables a faster response to any potential issues, ensuring problems are identified early rather than discovered in an emergency.

Automatic systems that sit within the AED itself allows for a reassuring layer of device monitoring, geo-fencing and geo-location. This functionality ensures that no matter why the device is removed from its normal location, it can be tracked in real time and successfully retrieved.

In addition, an automatic system would remove the burden on end-users to manually inform their local ambulance service about the placement of their AED(s). This is vital, as when a sudden cardiac arrest occurs, dispatchers must be able to immediately direct callers to the nearest registered AED.

Automation platforms

The Cardilink platform has been developed to use cellular technology to continuously monitor your AED’s status and track any movement in real time. Through a user-friendly app, the end user, ambulance dispatch centre and other authorized stakeholders can access the same live information to ensure each device remains ready for rescue at all times.

Another advantage of using an automated platform is that it enables cloud-based post rescue data sharing which is something increasingly requested by emergency physicians and ambulance services as part of their minimum resuscitation data set. (European Resuscitation Council, 2021; AHA, 2023).

Remote maintenance

Some manufacturers now produce defibrillator cabinets that allow you to track the readiness of your AED remotely, making it easier to identify issues and fix them so that your device is always rescue ready.

Cabinets such as the Rotaid Outdoor Cabinet allow you to remotely monitor your device and will alert you to any issues. You will then need to check on your device to understand why the AED didn’t pass its test and fix the problem. 

Why AED protection and readiness matter

Installing a defibrillator is a vital step in protecting lives but it’s only effective if the device is ready to be used when an emergency occurs. Protecting an AED is not a one off task or a box ticking exercise, it requires ongoing maintenance and monitoring of its environment, security, monitoring and visibility.

By ensuring that your defibrillator is adequately protected from the elements, theft, vandalism and that it’s continuously monitored, allows you to significantly reduce the risk of AED failure in an emergency. Automated monitoring and tracking tools provide reassurance that your device is available, functional and visible, even if it’s been used or moved.

In order to save more lives from sudden cardiac arrest and ensure AEDs are always ready and available, it makes sense to utilize these tools to incorporate this level of smart monitoring and connectivity into each device.

When it comes to saving lives, readiness isn’t optional, it’s vital.

For more advice and guidance on providing the right protection for your defibrillator, please contact our expert team.