Air Methods to launch new medical delivery network across rural USA using Wingcopter’s flagship eVTOL drones

Air med­ical ser­vice provider Air Meth­ods is cre­at­ing a drone-based, med­ical deliv­ery net­work through­out the Unit­ed States which will deploy a fleet of Wing­copter’s flag­ship autonomous eVTOL drone, the Wing­copter 198.

As part of a new strate­gic part­ner­ship, the launch of Spright is a new­ly formed drone solu­tion which aims to help improve health­care and min­imise sup­ply chal­lenges. Wing­copter’s abil­i­ty to meet pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty will enable it to cre­ate a nation­al net­work built around Air Meth­ods’ exist­ing infra­struc­ture of more than 300 bases, which serves hun­dreds of hos­pi­tals across 48 states in pre­dom­i­nant­ly rur­al areas.

This will allow drone tech­nol­o­gy to flex­i­bly trans­port essen­tial med­ical sup­plies, such as blood, med­i­cines, diag­nos­tics or small med­ical devices.

Jae­Lynn Williams, CEO of Air Meth­ods, said: “The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic exac­er­bat­ed some of the real chal­lenges in our health care sys­tem cre­at­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to find bet­ter solu­tions to extend access to health­care, espe­cial­ly in rur­al Amer­i­ca.

“That is why we are doing what Air Meth­ods does best, tak­ing to the skies, using the lat­est in tech­nol­o­gy and drone inno­va­tion, deliv­er­ing hope and facil­i­tat­ing heal­ing with speed and effi­cien­cy that was pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­in­able.  We see Spright serv­ing a vast­ly under­served mar­ket and play­ing a huge role in a future full of bet­ter out­comes for every­one.” 

Air Meth­ods serves as the nation’s largest and most expe­ri­enced FAA Part 135 Oper­a­tor. Deliv­er­ing life­sav­ing care to more than 70,000 peo­ple every year, the com­pa­ny has near­ly 40 years of air med­ical expe­ri­ence. It is one of the largest com­mu­ni­ty-based providers of air med­ical ser­vices and the fleet of owned, leased or main­tained air­craft fea­tures more than 450 heli­copters and fixed wing air­craft.

Lat­er this year, Spright will be part­ner­ing with Hutchin­son Region­al Med­ical Sys­tem in Hutchin­son, Kansas for the launch of an ini­tial pilot project using Wingcopter’s deliv­ery drones. It will pro­vide a proof-of-con­cept of how it can pro­vide need­ed relief and cer­tain­ty for med­ical resources in rur­al Unit­ed States. Addi­tion­al details on this ini­tial project will be revealed as the deploy­ment draws near.

The Wing­copter 198 uses the company’s patent­ed tilt-rotor tech­nol­o­gy which allows for ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing, while also enabling effi­cient for­ward flight over long ranges and elim­i­nat­ing the need for addi­tion­al infra­struc­ture.

The drone has a range of up to 68 miles (110km), a max­i­mum speed of 90 mph (145 km/h) and can car­ry a pay­load of up to 13 lbs (6kg).

Tom Plüm­mer, Co-Founder and CEO of Wing­copter, said: “We are thrilled to team up with Air Meth­ods to cre­ate a life-sav­ing drone deliv­ery net­work through­out the Unit­ed States. “Our tech­nol­o­gy has been used glob­al­ly to effec­tive­ly deliv­er med­ical sup­plies, for exam­ple insulin in Ire­land, children’s vac­cines in Van­u­atu, emer­gency med­ica­tion in Malawi, and just recent­ly, blood sam­ples in Ger­many.

“Our vision to ‘save and improve lives’ res­onates per­fect­ly with Air Meth­ods’ lega­cy of pro­vid­ing life­sav­ing care, com­bined with Spright’s ambi­tion to improve the qual­i­ty of health­care across the U.S. by deploy­ing fleets of Wing­copters, and we are excit­ed about scal­ing this togeth­er.” 

Wing­copter is focused on opti­mis­ing med­ical sup­ply chains but in future, the start­up will also deliv­er pack­ages, tools and spare parts, as well as food and gro­ceries. In 2020, Wing­copter was named a Tech­nol­o­gy Pio­neer by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum.