Virgin Media O2 has over 300 defibs registered on The Circuit across the UK. Since January 2023 their defibs have been used in 16 cardiac emergencies. Reflective of their mission to ensure their defibs have the best chance of saving a life each new store will have a defib registered on The Circuit. They wanted to make their defibs available for ambulance services to deploy in an emergency, to help as many people in their communities as possible.
Alison Fanthom, Head of Infrastructure, Virgin Media O2, explained:
“We wanted to have defibrillators in all of our stores as we know how much access to them can improve someone’s chance of survival after a cardiac arrest.
Our defibs have been used on quite a number of occasions now and helped to ensure that people have survived. It’s always amazing and emotional to hear the stories and we’re so proud of our store team who have been willing and on hand to help when they’ve been needed.
Today, we have over 300 defibs across the country and as we open more stores, each of those is fitted with one. We are also looking at opportunities where we can potentially relocate the defibs to outside of our stores so that they can then be available to the public 24/7.”
Jay Stewart, Stores Operations Support Lead, shared the ease of registering the defibs, and the importance of regular maintenance checks by the defib Guardians – the employees responsible for looking after the defibs.
“The set up of the organisation account was really straightforward. The bulk upload spreadsheet makes it so easy to set up all of the defibs and send out the welcome emails to the store Guardians.
I would recommended scheduling monthly maintenance checks, and recording your checks on The Circuit. It is essential to make sure that your defib is ready to go in an emergency.”