From AED to Active Network Response: Avive and SANDISK

In the United States alone, more than 350,000 people experience a cardiac arrest outside a hospital each year. Only about one in 10 survives.¹ It's a staggering figure, and one that's even harder to accept, given what research has shown: early CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) and Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) can dramatically improve those odds.

AEDs have been widely deployed for decades. Most of us have seen them—often dramatized in films where a jolt brings someone back to life, or quietly mounted on walls in airports, schools, and office buildings. But in a moment of crisis, few of us know where to find one, and even fewer feel prepared to use it.

Rory Beyer, Co‐founder, President, and COO of Avive, a healthcare technology company building a portable, connected AED, saw that disconnect clearly. He understood the problem wasn't a lack of tools, per se, but how those tools fit into real-world emergencies.

“[In the U.S.], the rate of survival for sudden cardiac arrest—the leading cause of death for people over 40 and the leading cause of death for student athletes —hasn't changed in decades,” Beyer said.²  “It's mind‐boggling that we haven't tried to approach this differently.”

That realization was the starting point for Avive.

Avive's story began at MIT, where Beyer and his classmate, Moseley Andrews, took a close look at AEDs and realized how little they had evolved since the 1990s. While still functionally effective, they are also bulky, intimidating, and lag far behind how modern technology works.

“We wanted to make an AED that was small, compact, and user-friendly; something that looks and feels like a product you would actually use,” Beyer said.

The team leaned into the expectations of modern technology—connectivity, software-driven, and intuitive design. The result isn't only an AED that's small and sleek, but a medical device with the smart capabilities we've come to trust every day.

When activated, Avive's AED touchscreen and audio work together to guide responders through each step with clear, approachable visuals. Even small design choices—like showing how to place pads on a woman's chest—were designed to steady people amid the chaos of an emergency.

But as Avive continued to refine a more intuitive device, Beyer saw that usability alone won't be enough to make a dent in survival rates.

“We realized that if we want to make a difference on chance of survival, we can't solve it by just making a better thing; a better product,” Beyer said. “We have to also involve a system of people, responders, and the entire emergency response ecosystem.”

That insight led to Avive's 4 Minute Community™, a model for rethinking the minutes after a cardiac arrest as a shared, coordinated responsibility to take action before an ambulance arrives.

Avive's Connect AED is the first AED integrated directly with 911 dispatch systems. When a cardiac arrest is reported, emergency services activate nearby citizen responders directly through their Avive devices and mobile text messages.

In one Georgia community, such an alert reached a trained resident responder less than a mile from where a neighbor had collapsed. Grabbing his Avive AED, he ran from his home and followed the device's GPS and on‐screen maps to the location. At the scene—in coordination with 911—he followed the device instructions step-by-step to deliver a lifesaving shock.

By the time an ambulance arrived, the patient had regained a pulse. The patient's heart rhythm was transmitted directly to the hospital, so clinicians can prepare appropriate treatment before the patient's arrival.

It was a chance at life that few out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims get.

Behind moments like these is an intelligent, data‐rich device engineered for absolute reliability.

Avive's AED runs a machine‐learning algorithm that analyzes heart rhythms in real time, records and transmits critical ECG data to hospitals, and continuously performs automated self‐tests to help ensure it's ready when it's needed most.

All that critical data must be written, stored, and retrieved flawlessly.

“You can never afford one corrupted file to be the reason audio didn't play or a shock wasn't analyzed correctly,” Beyer said. “It has to work—every single time.”

As Avive scaled its operations and production, data storage became foundational to its growth.

John Papas, Account Manager of North American Commercial Sales at SANDISK, has been supporting Avive on their journey, transitioning from consumer microSD™ cards to industrial-grade ones built for endurance, extreme temperatures, and continuous diagnostics.

“Avive needed expanded temperature support for devices stored outdoors, better endurance, and the ability to see health and diagnostic data from the card,” Papas said. “That's exactly where industrial‐grade storage makes sense.”

For Papas, working with Avive has been about more than just finding a key storage component. It's also about building a strong partnership in support of a life-critical product.

“Avive has been as close to a perfect customer as you can be—flexible and with a great purpose,” Papas added. “They understand the market, they plan and strategize many months ahead, and work with us to find solutions even amid constraints.”

The situation highlights how Avive isn't just building a better AED, it's creating a movement that brings citizens, dispatchers, responders, and clinicians together to tackle one of the deadliest medical events.

While storage remains invisible in those moments, it is the essential, quiet infrastructure that helps ensure the device—and critical data functions powering it—works reliably when seconds matter most.