The HeartStream company history

In 1992, Heartstream, Inc. was founded with the mission to develop a small, low-cost, rugged, reliable, safe, easy-to-use, and maintenance-free automated external defibrillator (AED) that could be successfully used by a layperson responding to sudden cardiac arrest.

Heartstream introduced its first AED, the ForeRunner, in 1996. The Heartstream ForeRunner AED marked the first widespread commercial use of a biphasic waveform in an external defibrillator.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) purchased Heartstream in 1997. Heartstream then added a relabelled version of the ForeRunner for Laerdal Medical Corporation called the Heartstart FR.
In 1999, Hewlett-Packard spun off the Medical Products Group, including the Heartstream Operation, into Agilent Technologies. While part of Agilent, Heartstream introduced a new AED, the Agilent Heartstream FR2. Laerdal Medical marketed this device as the Laerdal Heartstart FR2.

 Heartstream became part of Philips Medical Systems in 2001 when Philips purchased the entire Medical Group from Agilent Technologies. In 2002, Philips re-branded all of their defibrillators as HeartStart Defibrillators. In the same year, Philips introduced a new family of defibrillators, including the HeartStart Home and HeartStart OnSite AEDs.