AED specialist Medisol advocates open defibrillator database

An independent open database for AED devices is more than welcome. That was the message Medisol, a company that specializes in the sale of Automatic External Defibrillators, gave to Joba van den Berg during a working visit by the CDA politician.

By: Dimitri Reijerman

An AED, a portable device that can restore the heart rhythm in the event of cardiac arrest, can literally be of vital importance. That is why the Vlissingen-based Medisol the slogan 'saving lives'. The company has focused on the AED market since 2004 via online sales and now does so internationally. In the Netherlands alone, Medisol has sold more than 40,000 defibrillators.

Pieter Joziasse, founder of Medisol, says: “We are 'the Mediamarkt' in the AED world. We sell all brands and in large quantities. But we specialize in providing service and advice”. Thanks in part to the possibilities of e-commerce, Medisol now has 35 employees. The company has also won an FD Gazelle nine years in a row.

Six minutes

With its high AED density, the Netherlands is a frontrunner, Joziasse told Van den Berg. The company has the ambitious goal of rolling out the network of defibrillators in Europe so far that every European who has a heart attack can be helped within six minutes. Medisol hopes to gain more attention for this goal, among other things through the non-profit Saving Lives Foundation.

The AED market has now been standardised to a certain extent, for example because manufacturers have agreed to use the same logo for a placed defibrillator. Nevertheless, Joziasse pointed out a sore point to the CDA politician. In his view, the current STAN database, which in theory stores the location of all AEDs placed in the Netherlands, is too closed and incomplete. This is said to be caused, among other things, by the fact that the STAN database is managed by a commercial company. Joziasse says that his company also hears complaints from manufacturers about the state of affairs. He advocates an open database, maintained by a non-profit party.

Joba van den Berg indicated to the entrepreneur that he can raise the issues via FHI. Luc Knaven, responsible for the Medical Technology branch at FHI, will put these objections on paper and send them to the politicians in The Hague.

At the end of her working visit, Van den Berg was given a tour of the company. Among other things, Medisol employees showed the most modern but also older AED models. It was clearly visible that defibrillators have become increasingly compact and user-friendly in recent years.