Yup. I wish these were required in every business and public space, similar to fire extinguishers. Or even in every car, part of the mandatory first aid kit (I'm talking Europe here).
I think this is a chicken&egg problem: such requirement would be expensive initially but as the production of AED scaled up prices would drop.
Obviously training is required too, I'm not sure how feasible it is to get large fraction of population trained...
I think the cost for a defibrilator is around 3000 Euro. If you really want to, buy one (team up with your sports club, your company or some friends) and gift it to your community. They'll find a busy place to mount it.
You can get one for about 1000 euro (maybe 1100) new, about half for a used one. They cost about 100 Euro a year to service. Source: I have a used unit at home.
Most business have one here in Sweden and almost all public places like train stations, malls, hotels have one. Most taxis carry one to and can be alerted by 112 (the SOS number operators, 911 in the US) if they are close. Rural areas are the unsolved problem that these drones might help with.
The base issue with these is - besides the initial cost - is the maintenance.
An unused (hopefully) defibrillator needs to be periodically checked for battery levels and (I believe) some sort of diagnostics run to be certain that when/if needed it will be efficient.
Like with fire extinguishers or other periodical checks, most probably this must be done by someone qualified/specialized, which may represent a non trivial cost, I wouldn't be surprised if it was something in the 200-400 Euro/year or something like that, and probably every n (5-8?) years you would need to replace the device with a new one.
Besides, there is an issue (in non-restricted access placements) about theft and vandalism.
See the other comment please, seems like service cost is reasonable.
Vandalism and theft sure are problems, placing them in locations with either camera surveillance (bank foyers, gas stations) or 24/7 personell available might be solutions to these problems.
If you think about the potential good it can make in case of need, the cost (whatever it is) is reasonable, what I was trying to say (without in any way negating the usefulness of having more of these in more places) is that the initial cost is small when compared to the overall costs (direct and indirect).
It has been introduced by Law only recently here (Italy) in a number of public places, and there are a lot of perplexities about the bureaucracy connected, the reliability of this or that model (or manufacturing firm) availability of spares, legal responsabilities of the provider, etc.
I believe (but I may be wrong as - as said - they are not yet common here) that the trend is towards some forms of "service" or lease/rent for the devices including their maintenance and all the bureaucratic paper and electronic work (by Law the device needs to be "registered" on a "online map").
Costs at the moment for this latter approach (rent + service) start from as low as 20 to something like 60 Euro/month for 48/60 months contracts, AFAIK, and they include an insurance against theft/vandalism, but it has to be seen how it will work out.
Some details of the norms around these are not clear (yet).
They appear to be cost effective if there is at least a 20% chance of use annually (which you could estimate from the population that would be close enough to use it).
I doubt putting it in every car is cost effective.
It’s not necessary to train people in how to use AEDs (the ones intended for public use talk you through it, and I expect the emergency operators can too)
How it works here is bigger business and public places have them - the public ones are in little boxes and the 999 operators will tell you where they are plus give you the key codes (I just checked and surprisingly my city has roughly six public ones for every 10,000 people, not even counting the ones routinely in ambulances and DC police cars)
The vast majority of European countries at least [0]. Every car needs to have one, their contents is standardised and since they're produced in huge quantities, they're hilariously cheap.
First aid training and an exam are also mandatory for getting your driver's license in many countries.
Check out the link, it also has color coded maps for first aid kit, fire extinguishers and high-vis jacket requirements.
The first aid kit also usually means required first aid training as part of getting a driver's license. However I don't know if any countries require refresh sessions, so most people probably forget all except the basics.
They seem to be coming down a lot - I remember looking a year or two ago and they were above $3000 AUD here, but now I can find some for around $1500 - $2000 (around US$1100 or €950). It's getting down to the point where I could basically justify buying my own one to carry with my first aid kit...
