Deciding whether to shock a stopped heart · Ceded (since 1979)

Automated external defibrillators reached the market in 1979 with the Heart-Aid, which read a single lead of the electrocardiogram, ruled on whether the rhythm was shockable and told a first aider what to do.

The rhythm analysis is the medical judgment, and it was given to the device from the first model. A defibrillator decides that the trace is ventricular fibrillation or fast ventricular tachycardia, refuses to fire on anything else, and then either prompts an untrained bystander to press the button or fires by itself. No clinician reviews that decision and usually none is present, which is the entire point of the machine. What did not move is everything around it. Recognising the collapse, calling for help, compressing the chest, and later deciding that resuscitation should stop and saying so to a family, are still human.