EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Technical Assistance Battery operated AED Defibs.

We mainly have Zoll AED PROs with a few Heartstart FR2s. As for your offer of help, I beleive we have already discussed my fond attachment to certian parts of my anatomy in a previous post .

We carry out the tests as per the manufacturers manual. It encompasses the delivered output power within a certain load and a battery check.
Have to say that we are in the process of removing them all from the wards and fitting powered/battery ones. The doctors dont like being told by a machine what to do!!! (now now no jokes)

The Zoll manual states that annual maintenance is "OPTIONAL" but it does give a Brief procedure for those of us who wish to. No mention of leakage tests though!

We perform technical services on the Philips products, the FR2 and FR2+ (and any Philips AED for that matter) dont require any periodic maintenance or service inspection (performs it self hourly, daily, weekly, monthly). A visual pass / fail test and battery / pads replacement at spesific intervals are the only requirements (this the users do in most cases by themselves)

If you want you can perform a electrical safety test (we use the IEC62353 Direct Leakage for routing maintenance), noting that this falls under a class II device, but it is a bit extreame (we dont even do performance verifications with defib testers except if there is something very wrong - only did it once due to failure of unit and needed documentation for factory)

In 1992 Heartstream Inc. was founded with the mission to develop a small, low-cost, rugged, reliable, safe, easy-to-use, and maintenance-free automated external defibrillator (AED) that could be successfully used by a layperson responding to sudden cardiac arrest.

Heartstream introduced its first AED, the ForeRunner, in 1996. The Heartstream ForeRunner AED marked the first widespread commercial use of a biphasic waveform in an external defibrillator.

The ForeRunner was not designed to replace manual defibrillators used by more highly trained medical staff. Instead it was intended to complement the efforts of medical staff by allowing the initial shock to be delivered by the first person to arrive at the scene.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) purchased Heartstream in 1997. Heartstream then added a relabeled version of the ForeRunner for Laerdal Medical Corporation called the Heartstart FR.

In 1999, Hewlett-Packard spun off its Medical Products Group, including the Heartstream operation, into Agilent Technologies. While part of Agilent, Heartstream introduced a new AED:- the Agilent Heartstream FR2. Laerdal Medical marketed this device as the Laerdal Heartstart FR2.

More recent models of HeartStart AEDs can be configured for use in advanced mode, allowing the device to be used as a manual defibrillator. This can be beneficial when the patient is transferred from the lay person to qualified medical staff.

Heartstream became part of Philips Medical Systems in 2001 when Philips purchased the entire Medical Group from Agilent. In 2002 Philips re-branded all of their defibrillators as HeartStarts. In that same year Philips introduced a new family of defibrillators, including the HeartStart Home and HeartStart OnSite AEDs.

ForeRunner and FR AEDs:-

1) Heartstream ForeRunner
2) Laerdal Heartstart FR

FR2 series AEDs:-

1) Agilent FR2
2) Laerdal Heartstart FR2
3) Laerdal Heartstart FR2+
4) Philips HeartStart FR2+

HS1 family of AEDs:-

1) Laerdal HeartStart
2) Philips HeartStart Home
3) Philips HeartStart OnSite

Key points about the FR and Heartstart AEDs:-

1) BIT (Battery Insertion Test ... self test routine initiated simply by inserting the battery)
2) Lithium battery (Lithium Manganese Dioxide Li-MNO2) : high energy density (typically more than 100 shocks, but over 300 with FR2), good pulse capability, long standby life (five years or more with later AEDs)
3) SMART arrhythmia analysis
4) SMART biphasic waveform
5) Unattended automatic self-testing