Lancashire and South Cumbria set to revolutionise NHS pathology deliveries in the UK

The NHS in Lan­cashire and South Cum­bria is set to pio­neer the use of drone tech­nol­o­gy to deliv­er med­ical sam­ples between select­ed hos­pi­tal sites thanks to around £1.4 mil­lion in UK Research and Inno­va­tion fund­ing.

One of 17 projects select­ed nation­al­ly, the work will see Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tals of More­cambe Bay NHS Foun­da­tion Trust (UHMBT) and Lan­cashire Teach­ing Hos­pi­tals (LTH) NHS Foun­da­tion Trust (LHTr) team­ing up with local enter­pris­es.

Select­ed as part of the government’s Future Flight Chal­lenge, the two-phase tri­al will first see med­ical sam­ples being trans­port­ed between the Roy­al Lan­cast­er Infir­mary (RLI), West­mor­land Gen­er­al and Fur­ness Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (FGH) before sim­u­lat­ing the poten­tial expan­sion to Roy­al Pre­ston Hos­pi­tal.

The elec­tric drones will cut the deliv­ery times between the hos­pi­tals across More­cambe Bay by over an hour, opti­mis­ing the oper­a­tion of pathol­o­gy labs, mean­ing that patients and clin­i­cians will have access to results faster.

Cur­rent­ly sam­ples trav­el between the hos­pi­tals by van sev­er­al times a day, so the new tech­nol­o­gy sets out to reduce the car­bon foot­print as part of the health service’s wider green agen­da.

The drones, devel­oped by UK com­pa­ny SkyLift UAV, will oper­ate spe­cif­ic routes across the bay between the hos­pi­tals for a tri­al peri­od of 90 days and will fly almost silent­ly in their own ded­i­cat­ed air­space at 250 feet above ground lev­el, thanks to sup­port from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty and co-oper­a­tion from large pri­vate sec­tor organ­i­sa­tions.

UHMBT chief allied health pro­fes­sion­al and health­care sci­en­tist Tony Crick said: “Drones deliv­er life­sav­ing defib­ril­la­tors to those ‘on scene’ first help­ing heart attack vic­tims in Swe­den, also deliv­er­ing urgent med­ical sup­plies and equip­ment in Rwan­da and Ghana.

“They are instead part of the mod­ern range of equip­ment avail­able to UHMBT and LHTr to oper­ate in a more effi­cient and effec­tive way.”

UHMBT direc­tor of cor­po­rate affairs Phil Wood­ford added: “It typ­i­cal­ly takes any­thing from 60–90 min­utes to dri­ve a van between the RLI and FGH, whilst spew­ing out pol­lu­tants that dam­age the atmos­phere and our health.

“There­fore, trav­el time door to door by drone will be achieved in around 15–20 min­utes, slash­ing the nor­mal time by up to 70%. It also has the poten­tial to aid clin­i­cal deci­sion mak­ing with the removal of unnec­es­sary trans­port delays.”

LTH clin­i­cal direc­tor for pathol­o­gy Pro­fes­sor Antho­ny Row­bot­tom MBE con­tin­ued: “This impor­tant project will rev­o­lu­tionise deliv­er­ies across a spe­cif­ic part of Lan­cashire and South Cum­bria and pro­vide valu­able insight into how this can be expand­ed across a larg­er pathol­o­gy part­ner­ship net­work.

“Not only will this expe­dite the trans­fer of patient sam­ples but could pro­vide scope for branch­ing into oth­er NHS ser­vices, and in the long-term aspire towards poten­tial­ly extend­ing drone use to home deliv­ery for patients.”

Future Flight Chal­lenge direc­tor Gary Cutts con­clud­ed: “From cut­ting the length of time some­one waits for med­i­cine to arrive, to sup­ply­ing green­er ways to trav­el, the 17 projects we have select­ed will deliv­er real ben­e­fits to peo­ple across the UK.”

Last month, Boots became the first com­mu­ni­ty phar­ma­cy in the UK to deliv­er pre­scrip­tion med­i­cines by drone.

In Feb­ru­ary 2021, Argyll and Bute Health and Social Care Part­ner­ship (HSCP) part­nered with Sky­ports to use drones to trans­port COVID-19 test sam­ples and oth­er med­ical sup­plies between remote loca­tions in the west of Scot­land.