The Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS) has said it could look into drone technology to deploy defibrillators.

Today, KSS has revealed its new five year strategy 'Working Together to Save More Lives' which hopes to take steps in reaching more patients across the South East.

It comes after it responded to 3,051 incidents including medical emergencies, road traffic crashes and accidental injuries in 2021 making it the busiest in its 32 year history.

As demand reaches an all-time high, it plans to extend its services over the next five years. This includes increasing the availability of one of its helicopters.

The helicopter will run for a further six hours a day, meaning one will be available 18 hours a day instead of 12 hours and the other for 24 hours.

It will also be looking into drone technology to deploy defibrillators, which is already used in other countries, as well as other techniques to improve its medical interventions in the helicopter cabin.

The project is currently in its early stages but CEO David Welch explained: "Hopefully what that means is we can get defibrillators to patients within that magic 10 minutes. After cardiac arrest every minute in the first 10 minutes your chances of survival decrease significantly.

"If we can use drones to deploy defibrillators really quickly then that is a big thing for the community."

Although the charity is only in the initial stages, it plans to create a heat map of "hot spots" where people tend to experience cardiac arrest and create a drone station in the area.

The device would then be deployed within 10 minutes of the 999 call within a particular radius while an ambulance is on its way.

This means whoever is at the patient's side could use it while they wait for medical assistance to arrive.

It will help paramedics save time on the scene and support patients in transit to make sure they arrive at hospital quickly.

The strategy also sets out goals for developing clinical care, its patient and family aftercare service to support people in their recovery and its community-based initiatives to prevent and respond to emergencies.

Mr Welch said: "As one team, we will act decisively and collaboratively to achieve our ambitious plans for the future – reaching more patients, improving more outcomes and working together to save more lives.”

"Collaboration and partnership are key to our success, especially with our colleagues in South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb), the wider NHS and the communities we serve.

"To realise our vision, we need our communities to come together to enable sustainable change so that together we can save more lives.

"Our future success is very much dependent on the dedication, expertise and passion within the wider KSS family who will all play a key role in the ongoing implementation and success of our strategy.

"It currently costs over £15.2 million a year to operate our life-saving service, with 86% of our total income raised through the incredible generosity of our supporters which ensures we can give every patient the best possible chance of survival and recovery.

"To enable our success we will increase awareness of our life saving work and inspire even more support from our communities. Together we can achieve great things."

Medical director at KSS, Dr Duncan Bootland, added: "To realise our vision of an end to preventable loss of life from medical emergency, we need to collaborate with like-minded organisations to deliver community based initiatives that prevent and respond to medical emergency.

"When those emergencies do occur, we need to deliver the best possible medicine and provide ongoing support and aftercare, giving our patients and their families the best chance of a better future."

Former patient and now chair of the board of trustees, Barney Burgess, said on the plan: "We have focused on those areas where we can make the biggest difference to the care we provide and to our patient outcomes.

"Through examining the effectiveness of our service, thinking differently about how current problems could be solved, and ultimately looking at how we could further develop to deliver better patient outcomes, we have outlined our goals with related key projects that will drive our service forward."

When a call comes in KSS can reach any part of Kent, Surrey and Sussex in under 30 minutes.