Drone Delivery Canada “Care by Air Project” Collaboration with DSV and Halton Healthcare Begins Commercial Operations

Drone Deliv­ery Cana­da (DDC) has announced that its six-month “Care by Air Project” tri­al, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with DSV and Hal­ton Health­care, has now com­mer­cial­ly start­ed, reports stattimes.com. First revealed last Novem­ber, DDC is using its Spar­row drone, DroneSpot take­off and land­ing zones as well as FLYTE soft­ware to enable defined-route deliv­er­ies.

Oth­er part­ners include McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty and Air Cana­da Car­go, to assist devel­op a reli­able and effi­cient process for trans­port­ing med­ical sup­plies and prod­ucts through a drone deliv­ery sys­tem.

The aim is to trans­port a wide range of health­care sup­plies, includ­ing med­ical iso­topes for can­cer care (pro­vid­ed by McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty), using car­go drones to Oakville Trafal­gar Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal in Oakville, Ontario, for quick and effec­tive deliv­ery. This drone deliv­ery of vital med­ical sup­plies is the first of its type in Cana­da, deliv­er­ing health­care items direct­ly to a hos­pi­tal for on-site patient diag­no­sis, treat­ment or care.

Mar­tin Roos, MD of DSV Air & Sea Cana­da, com­ment­ed, “The post-pan­dem­ic era has high­light­ed the need to find inno­va­tions in health­care, enabling safe, secure and reli­able ways to deliv­er vital or urgent med­ical sup­plies to facil­i­tate patient care.”

He con­tin­ued, “The Care by Air Project rep­re­sents a major step toward opti­mis­ing these sup­ply chains. We are excit­ed to take this next step in drone logis­tics by part­ner­ing as the hub for deliv­er­ies to Oakville Trafal­gar Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal and to play an inte­gral role in devel­op­ing drone deliv­ery routes in our com­mu­ni­ties. This will ben­e­fit Hal­ton Healthcare’s hos­pi­tals and the patients they serve.”

Steve Magirias

All oper­a­tions are to be con­duct­ed in accor­dance with appro­pri­ate Cana­di­an reg­u­la­tions and flights are being remote­ly mon­i­tored by DDC from its Oper­a­tions Con­trol Cen­tre locat­ed in Vaugh­an, Ontario.

Steve Magirias, CEO of DDC, said, “This part­ner­ship with Hal­ton Health­care and DSV is high­ly inno­v­a­tive and ground­break­ing. The pilot project is just the first step of the over­all vision of con­nect­ing all hos­pi­tals with­in the Hal­ton Health­care umbrel­la. We are proud to com­mence the oper­a­tions and look for­ward to sup­port­ing oth­er hos­pi­tals in Ontario as well as in Cana­da.”

The pro­jec­t’s aim is to demon­strate the worth and use­ful­ness of a drone deliv­ery sys­tem in health­care com­pared to tra­di­tion­al trans­porta­tion tech­niques.

Hilary Rodrigues, Senior VP Cor­po­rate Ser­vices, Per­for­mance & Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer, Hal­ton Health­care, added, “Being at the fore­front of an inno­v­a­tive drone deliv­ery sys­tem is the ide­al way to con­tribute to the advance­ment of health­care so we can be more respon­sive to the care needs of our patients, fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties.”

The project also aims to gain sup­port and clear­ance for the future trans­porta­tion of a wide range of health­care sup­plies and prod­ucts by car­go drones, includ­ing spec­i­mens of blood or human tis­sue to diag­nose and cure heart dis­ease and can­cer.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.dsv.com/en-ca/

haltonhealthcare.on.ca

(News Source: https://www.stattimes.com/)

(Top image: DDC)