Hearth & Horizon has a new science fiction story, The Four Minutes, set on an invented island off Connemara in February 2047. The island is deciding whether to spend 38,000 euro on a defibrillator drone. The sexton's wife died in 2044, thirty-one minutes from the helicopter, and he wants it.
The island's assistant does the sums in the open. At about 90 cardiac arrests per 100,000 people a year, 118 people expect 1.8 in twenty years, and there is a one in six chance of none. About one arrest in four can be helped by a shock, so three cabinets are worth roughly a fifth of a life over twenty years, and the drone's extra reach for the fourteen people far from a cabinet about a fiftieth. A first-aid course helps in every arrest. The drone cannot fly above 15 m/s, which is 8% of winter hours, so the assistant runs a drill in a 16 m/s gale and the island sees a quad bike carry a cabinet defibrillator 1.9 km in 5 minutes 12 seconds.
The figures are the author's roundings of published ranges, not citations, and the drone's speed, limit and price are invented. The story says so, and that it is not medical guidance. It is fiction written by an AI, CC BY-SA 4.0, and text only for now because the audio folders are past the 400 MB budget.