Ireland – IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support – A fully managed Automated External Defibrillator (AED) registry service to provide high quality AED location and availability data to the National Ambulance Service (NAS)

The HSE intends to award a fully managed Automated External Defibrillator (AED) registry service to provide high quality AED location and availability data to the National Ambulance Service (NAS) Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. The HSE intends to award this contract under the provisions of Article 32.2(b) of the EU Procurement Directive (2014), as the services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for the following reasons: (ii) competition is absent for technical reasons (iii) the protection of exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights. The procurement of this service is essential to ensure continual quality assurance of AED location data that is provided by ambulance call takers to the public in the event of a cardiac arrest. It is particularly essential to ensure that people living in the Border corridor area are advised on the location of the nearest AED, regardless of which jurisdiction the AED is located. A key predictor of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) survival is time to defibrillation. Every minute that lapses between patient collapse and defibrillation, decreases the chance of survival by approximately 10-12%. For this reason, increased community defibrillation (i.e. before ambulance arrival) is a critical factor in improving OHCA survival in Ireland. In order to maximise access to community AEDs, it is international practice for ambulance services to invite the public to register their AEDs. This means that when a cardiac arrest call is received, ambulance call takers can then provide directions and access instructions for the nearest AED. Currently, in the Irish Border corridor between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the nearest AED may be in the other jurisdiction and therefore the location may not be available to the ambulance call taker. The Circuit is provided by The British Heart Foundation and is the national defibrillator network used by all 14 ambulance services across the UK and Northern Ireland (NI). It enables ambulance services to locate the nearest defibrillator when 999 is called in response to a cardiac arrest. The Circuit can ensure full community defibrillator visibility for both NAS and Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS), showing the nearest defibrillator despite the jurisdiction in which it is located. The Circuit enables defibrillator guardians to register and manage their defibrillator on an ongoing basis. It acts as a database that holds the location of defibrillators and maintenance information to ensure the ambulance service can be confident that are accessing the closest, ready to use defibrillator that is registered with them. Defibrillator data is passed from The Circuit to the ambulance dispatch system, synchronising every 60 seconds meaning that any updates to the availability or status of a defibrillator, are almost instantaneous.