Stearns County First in The State With AED Mapping System

ST. CLOUD -- Stearns County is leading by example when it comes to providing a quick response for someone suffering from a cardiac emergency.

The Sheriff's Office, along with local organizations, have been updating and providing new AED's throughout the county.

Sheriff Steve Soyka says besides the physical equipment, they've been working with St. Cloud based Geo Comm to map out where the AED's are located to help dispatchers when a cardiac emergency occurs.

Down in the dispatch center if there is a cardiac type call, dispatch can pull up that overlay and walk through the nearest AED, so these units are on scene much faster than waiting for emergency personnel.

Stearns County is the first in the state with this type of mapping and Soyka says the system has been live for a few months now.

Joel Vogel is with Advocates for Health and says before this could go live they needed to identify where each AED was located.

We hired someone go out and look at the AED's. We found about 20 percent of them the batteries or the pads were bad so we brought them up to speed and provided that information to the sheriff's office.

Stearns County currently has mapped 481 AED's throughout the county and are asking anyone to reach out to the sheriff's office to add more to their list.

Vogel says Sherburne County and Benton County have also inquired about adding an AED mapping system to their offices.

February is Heart Health month.