A $299 in-home defibrillator that is set to save victims of cardiac arrest

When his wife suffered a near fatal cardiac arrest at home Donovan Casey decided he had to act to improve a victim’s chances of survival and the result is incredible.

The world’s first mini personal defibrillator will soon be available in Australia to potentially save thousands of lives from cardiac arrest.

The CellAED, a small, portable Automatic External Defibrillators (AED) unit designed for home use, has now been approved by regulators.

Donovan Casey designed it after his wife Sarah had a sudden cardiac arrest at their Sydney home seven years ago. It will cost a fraction of the price of the $2000 to $5000 of existing defibrillators.

Sudden cardiac arrest is the world’s biggest causes of premature death and 80 per cent of cardiac arrests happen in the home. Only one in 10 survive.

Sarah Walke was only 39 when she had a cardiac arrest in 2014. All she remembers is having a sore shoulder.

The CellAED is a miniature defibrillator developed by Donovan Casey after his wife Sarah Walke had a heart attack at home.

“You think it will never happen to you. I’d had frozen shoulder previously and thought it was coming back,” she said.

She remembers nothing else at the time of the attack but her husband noticed a soft clucking noise before he realised she was no longer breathing.

After shaking off the initial shock, Mr Casey started CPR and called an ambulance, which luckily arrived swiftly.

“I was exhausted, good CPR, two minutes and you’re done, it’s significant exertion, but when they arrived, they used a defibrillator to bring her heart back into rhythm,” he said.

Paramedics Theo Mallos and Benjamin Gilmour with Sarah Walke and partner Donovan Casey after surviving her cardiac arrest in 2014. Picture: Craig Wilson

After two weeks in a coma, she pulled through.

“When I got out of hospital I was shocked how small the chances of survival is and we started thinking about how to improve the survival rate,” Ms Walke, now 48, said.

Rapid defibrillation is the only effective treatment for sudden cardiac arrest, an event that affects as many as 33,000 Australians a year.

AED applied within minutes of a cardiac arrest buys the patient time because, for every minute without defibrillation and CPR, the chances of being revived following a cardiac arrest drops 10 per cent.

“What we realised is if there had been an AED downstairs in our block of units, Donovan could not have got to it anyway, it had to be in reach, accessible within the house,” she said.

The CellAED mini defibrillator is made for home use.

With a background in engineering and science, Mr Casey set about making existing technology accessible to everyone through his start-up Rapid Response Revival, designing a miniaturised AED that is easy to use and, at about $299, affordable.

“One needs to be in every home but existing AEDs were too expensive. I realised it could happen again and I was thinking how do I reduce the cost?” he said.

“I knew it would have to be one-tenth of the price to get it into people’s homes like fire extinguishers and smoke detectors and that started the journey.”

The CellAED is a miniature defibrillator.

Ian Hutchinson suffered a cardiac arrest while riding his bike around Narrabeen Lake in 2018. His friend Don MacKee and bystanders gave CPR but it was not until the ambulance arrived that a defibrillator got his heart back.

‘I was clinically dead for 18 minutes,” the 58-year-old said, adding a portable or home-based defibrillator was a great idea.

“It’s brilliant because 80 per cent of the time a cardiac arrest happen at home and to have access to a defibrillator on the fridge, in your handbag or in the car that only costs a couple of hundred dollars is brilliant,” he said.

The device is the size of a mini iPad or small tablet and is activated in three steps before the automated device takes over.

“It’s snap, peel, and stick and then it is fully automated, a child could deploy it,” he said.

The device is now approved in 75 countries and available for online orders.