Australia: Swoop Aero drones to deliver “rapid medical testing for Queenslanders”

Aus­tralia con­tin­ues to be a lead­ing light for using drone deliv­ery and the lat­est devel­op­ment is a pro­posed trans­port­ing of pathol­o­gy sam­ples from the More­ton Bay islands to Mater Pathol­o­gy test­ing labs in Bris­bane under a new col­lab­o­ra­tion between Mater and Swoop Aero, reports a press release. The ini­tia­tive will slash up to six hours off the time it takes for sam­ples, includ­ing vital blood tests and Covid-19 swabs, to reach Mater for test­ing.

The release states, “The inte­grat­ed bi-direc­tion­al drone logis­tics net­work is expect­ed to col­lect more than 80,000 pathol­o­gy sam­ples a year from Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander Com­mu­ni­ty Health Ser­vice patients and oth­ers liv­ing on Strad­broke Island, Rus­sell Island, Macleay Island and addi­tion­al More­ton Bay islands ser­viced by Mater Pathol­o­gy, as well as the Red­lands and Hope Island on the Gold Coast.” This part­ner­ship rep­re­sents Australia’s first drone-enabled pathol­o­gy col­lec­tion net­work.

Debra Horns­by

Debra Horns­by, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Mater Pathol­o­gy, com­ment­ed, “Depend­ing on fer­ry ser­vices, it can take up to six hours to get sam­ples for test­ing back to Mater from Strad­die and the oth­er islands. With the huge increase in test­ing caused by COVID, there was a press­ing need to speed up our col­lec­tion ser­vices, and that’s when we approached Swoop Aero.”

She con­tin­ued, “Drones are safe, reli­able and so much faster than fer­ries and cars which means we save valu­able time in diag­nos­ing and treat­ing vul­ner­a­ble patients.”

Since Swoop Aero’s found­ing in 2017, the com­pa­ny has obtained advanced oper­a­tional approvals in 14 coun­tries and has achieved 20,000 oper­a­tional flights. Swoop com­menced oper­a­tions in Goondi­win­di, Queens­land in 2021 to trans­port rou­tine pre­scrip­tions to remote patients.

Fol­low­ing FAA type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Swoop Aero’s fleet of Kite TM air­craft are to trav­el dis­tances of over 175 kms on a sin­gle bat­tery charge across the Bris­bane area, car­ry­ing up to 10 lbs of med­ical car­go.

Eric Peck

Eric Peck, Swoop Aero’s CEO, remarked, “We have a big vision for Queens­land. By lever­ag­ing the most advanced tech­nol­o­gy-based plat­form on the mar­ket, our drones will unlock the skies to enable Mater to dri­ve for­ward the next era of pathol­o­gy trans­porta­tion.”

Mater and Swoop Aero are seek­ing fed­er­al sup­port for the pilot project through an Emerg­ing Avi­a­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Part­ner­ship (EATP) Grant. If suc­cess­ful, drones will be fly­ing across More­ton Bay in 2023 and future ini­tia­tives could include the deliv­ery of med­i­cines to aged care homes by Mater Phar­ma­cy.

The drones would land in Greater Spring­field for test­ing in the Mater Pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ries at Mater Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal Spring­field.

Maree Knight, Mater’s Dire­tor of Inno­va­tion, said, “Mater is at the fore­front of health­care inno­va­tion in Queens­land. The use case for pathol­o­gy-sam­ple drone trans­port is clear and will alle­vi­ate pres­sures on the health sys­tem to deliv­er time­ly, effec­tive and qual­i­ty health­care.”

Back­ground

Mater oper­ates Queensland’s largest not-for-prof­it net­work of pub­lic and pri­vate hos­pi­tals and health­care ser­vices. Found­ed in 1906 by the Sis­ters of Mer­cy, its Mis­sion is to pro­vide com­pas­sion­ate care to those who need it most. Mater’s 11 hos­pi­tals treat almost 580,000 patients a year and one in every five Queens­lan­ders is born at a Mater hos­pi­tal.

Mater Pathol­o­gy con­duct­ed 3 mil­lion pathol­o­gy tests in 2021 and con­duct­ed more than 2,500 Covid-19 tests a day dur­ing Queensland’s 2022 COVID peak.