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UK: Apian, Northumbria Healthcare Advance Automated, on-Demand Drone Delivery of Urgent Clinical Items

UK Med­ical drone start­up, Api­an Aero, and Northum­bria Health­care NHS Foun­da­tion Trust, are col­lab­o­rat­ing to explore the deploy­ment of Unmanned Aer­i­al Vehi­cles (UAVs) to car­ry chemother­a­py drugs, blood sam­ples and oth­er items between sites, reports a press release.

Fol­low­ing a UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) approval process, tri­al flights are to take place from today Feb­ru­ary 13th, to May 12th along a route from Wans­beck Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal at Ash­ing­ton up to Alnwick Infir­mary and then onto Berwick Infir­mary.

As Northum­bria Healthcare’s large, pre­dom­i­nant­ly rur­al region cov­ers Northum­ber­land and North Tyne­side, deploy­ing drones will reduce road deliv­ery times, make effi­cien­cies, and cut car­bon emis­sions. The release states, “The tri­al will col­lect logis­ti­cal data and assess the impact on patient expe­ri­ence, staff resources and the envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits.”

Sir James Mack­ey

Sir James Mack­ey, CEO of Northum­bria Health­care NHS Foun­da­tion Trust, com­ment­ed, “We are always inter­est­ed to explore ini­tia­tives which may be able to improve how we deliv­er care to our com­mu­ni­ties. With the area we cov­er and the num­ber of hos­pi­tals and oth­er sites we man­age, hav­ing effec­tive logis­tics to get sup­plies where they need to be is vital, while we are always mind­ful of our need to dri­ve effi­cien­cies and reduce our impact on the envi­ron­ment.”

He con­tin­ued, “Using drones has the poten­tial to help us deliv­er impor­tant drugs and sup­plies in a bet­ter, smarter way, so we are look­ing for­ward to see­ing how the test flights go. We are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing as much care as we can in our out­ly­ing com­mu­ni­ties, so logis­ti­cal routes to Alnwick and Berwick are a key focus.”

The UAVs, which are man­aged by Sky­ports, will be using the Swoop Aero Kook­abur­ra III drone. This can car­ry up to 3kg of pay­load with a max­i­mum speed of close to 70mph. There will be six flights per day at the start, increas­ing to up to 15 per day by the end of the tri­al. The drone is to deliv­er chemother­a­py med­ica­tion to both Alnwick and Berwick Infir­maries.

Mean­while, return flights from Alnwick and Berwick will return pathol­o­gy sam­ples to Wans­beck. Oth­er items that may be deliv­ered include blood packs, pre­scrip­tions, med­ical equip­ment and mail.

Api­an Aero co-Founder and Med­ical Direc­tor, Dr Christo­pher Law, said, “This tri­al builds on Apian’s work in the Solent where we flew the world’s first chemother­a­py and deliv­ered the UK’s first pre­scrip­tion med­i­cine by drone.”

He con­tin­ued, “While there’s still much work to be done before UAVs can oper­ate autonomous­ly in non-seg­re­gat­ed air­space, there’s an equal and oppo­site amount of evi­dence for Api­an to col­lect for how on-demand deliv­ery can impact health­care just as it has our per­son­al lives.”

Flight Route

The CAA has approved the fol­low­ing flight win­dows. Please note, these times are the max­i­mum hours of fly­ing approved. The project will only acti­vate the air­space when need­ed.

Mon­day: 9:45–14:15, 16:00–18:15 (6:45 hrs)
Tues­day: 9:45–14:15, 16:00–18:15 (6:45 hrs)
Wednes­day: 8:45–14:45, 16:00–18:15 (8:15 hrs)
Thurs­day: 8:45–14:30, 16:00–18:15 (8:15 hrs)
Fri­day: 8:45–14:30, 16:00–18:15 (8:15 hrs)
Sat­ur­day: No fly­ing
Sun­day: No fly­ing

Flight Dis­tances

Wans­beck Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal to Alnwick Infir­mary:-

Flight dis­tance: 21 miles

Max­i­mum flight time: 28 min­utes

Alnwick Infir­mary to Berwick Infir­mary:-

Flight dis­tance: 45 miles

Max­i­mum flight time: 55 min­utes

This tri­al is being pri­vate­ly fund­ed by Api­an. The drones are to be based at Wans­beck Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal as the hub, with Alnwick infir­mary and Berwick infir­mary as the spokes.

A peri­od of com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment about this project is tak­ing place along­side the test flights. You can take part in the online sur­vey here:-

https://survey.alchemer.eu/s3/90531102/Northumbria-drone-trial

For more infor­ma­tion

https://apian.aero/

https://www.northumbria.nhs.uk

(Top image: Api­an)

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