Design Engineering
Showcase 2020

Heart Restart is a unique and innovative defibrillator because of its small size, the fact that it is owned by the at-risk patient and that it empowers their friends and family to save their life in case of an emergency. Heart Restart gives a second chance at life from a pocket.

Cardiac arrest is the second leading cause of death in the UK with a survival rate of less than 10% in out of hospital cases. Already clinically dead, the only way to revive someone is by defibrillation and the faster the response time, the better. In London, the average emergency response time is about 11 minutes, and even in the most defibrillator dense area, the average time to retrieve a defibrillator is 10 minutes. This is not fast enough. Heart Restart changes this by enabling people at risk to carry a life-saving device with them everywhere they go, which will empower their friends and family to save their lives in a time of need. By bringing the response time down to within 3 minutes, we ensure minimal damage to the brain and an increase in the chance of survival from 10% to 76%.

The small size enables users to easily carry the device around anywhere they go. The device has a ribbon and tag attached that can hang outside the bag, which will allow people to easily identify and locate the device when needed.

We minimized the number of moving parts and streamlined the design so that we were able to decrease the number of steps from 28 to 8. Through extensive user testing and iterating, we lowered the time to defibrillation from 2 minutes to 1 minute.

By using a screen with animated graphics, we dramatically increased the accuracy and speed of performing the steps and removed the language barrier.

Through our research, we found that women were less likely to receive effective help due to various misconceptions and worries. Therefore, we designed female graphics so that the user will receive explicit permission and instruction to provide proper aid.

The defibrillator automatically detects shockable rhythms ventricular fibrillation (VF) and ventricular tachycardia (VT). If no shock is advised, the device will proceed to instruct the user to perform lifesaving CPR.