Coffee shops, ATMs ideal spots for automated external defibrillators: study

Coffee shops and automated bank machines would make ideal locations for installing automated external defibrillators to help people who have collapsed following a cardiac arrest, researchers suggest.

In a study published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, an engineering team at the University of Toronto identified all businesses with 20 or more locations in Canada’s largest city, then mapped where cardiac arrests had occurred within 100 metres of those spots between 2007 and 2015.

Cardiac arrest causes the heart to suddenly stop beating due to an electrical problem and is considered a medical emergency. Responding quickly to restart the heart with a defibrillator can mean the difference between life and death. So, it’s important to give bystanders quick access to an automated external defibrillator, or AED, the researchers say.

The researchers came up with a top-10 list of prime locations to place AEDs, which provide a bystander with visual and audio instructions for delivering a shock that can restart the heart before paramedics arrive.

Those locations include Tim Hortons, Starbucks and Second Cup coffee shops; ATMs for the country’s largest banks; Subway sandwich shops; and Green P public parking lots. Tim Hortons, with more than 300 outlets in Toronto, was ranked first.

“The key is we’re trying to create maybe an unconscious association for the potential bystander to a cardiac arrest,” said principal researcher Timothy Chan, director of the Centre for Healthcare Engineering at the university.