New focus groups to discuss how eVTOL aircraft and advanced air mobility can support UK’s organ retrieval service

Indus­try experts from across the grow­ing eVTOL mar­ket are being encour­aged to join a series of focus groups at the end of this month, which will dis­cuss how an advanced air mobil­i­ty net­work could com­ple­ment the UK’s Nation­al Organ Retrieval Ser­vice (NORS).

They have been set up by lead researcher Jere­my Hart­ley, who is a MSc stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West Lon­don. They will take place on Tues­day, May 25th from 1pm and at both 1pm and 5pm on Wednes­day, May 26th. All times are in BST.

Those tak­ing part will be asked to share expe­ri­ences, val­ues and exper­tise in their giv­en fields. The groups are open to NHS staff involved in the organ retrieval process, includ­ing the retrieval teams, inten­sive ther­a­py unit doc­tors, as well as hos­pi­tal and NORS man­age­ment. 

As well as those in the med­ical pro­fes­sion, Mr Hart­ley would also like to invite those from the aero­space indus­try. This can be those from the Civ­il Aero­nau­ti­cal Asso­ci­a­tion, HEMS man­age­ment and/or pilots, eVTOL air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers and experts from organ­i­sa­tions spe­cial­is­ing in advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM).

Intro­duc­ing the focus groups, he said: “Trans­porta­tion with­in health­care is cru­cial to sav­ing lives and thus plays a very impor­tant role with­in med­ical organ­i­sa­tions. One of the NHS ser­vices that requires a reli­able and effec­tive trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture is NORS, which is part of NHS Blood and Trans­plant. 

“Today, air trans­porta­tion has a lim­it­ed role with­in health­care and cur­rent­ly NORS retrieval teams are main­ly trans­port­ed by ground between hos­pi­tals. With advance­ments in eVTOL air­craft, new options for safe, reli­able, and eco­nom­i­cal air trans­porta­tion could become avail­able soon. 

“AAM experts say they will be able to con­nect cities in a safe man­ner that will see users ben­e­fit from cost and time sav­ings with­out the bur­den of harm­ful CO2 emis­sions. If this is the case, this new type of avi­a­tion could not only alle­vi­ate time and finan­cial bur­dens in health­care but also allow agen­cies like the NHS to become a more envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able organ­i­sa­tion. This study will look at the trans­porta­tion of NORS retrieval teams by eVTOL air­craft ver­sus ground trans­porta­tion.”

The Nation­al Organ Retrieval Ser­vice (NORS) is a vital part of the Trans­plan­ta­tion path­way, which makes organ trans­plan­ta­tion a real­is­tic option for peo­ple on the trans­plant wait­ing list.

It was estab­lished by NHS Blood and Trans­plant in April 2010, and since then, NORS has been suc­cess­ful in play­ing a vital role in con­tribut­ing to the increase in deceased donors and organ trans­plants. As a key com­po­nent of the Organ Dona­tion and Trans­plan­ta­tion infra­struc­ture, it pro­vides a nation­al 24-hour ser­vice for retriev­ing organs from deceased donors.

Focus group par­tic­i­pants will be asked to give between 90 min­utes and two hours of their time to the ses­sion they will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in, which will involve up to sev­en oth­er par­tic­i­pants. 

Talk­ing to eVTOL Insights, Hart­ley added: “I’ve been in health­care as an oper­at­ing depart­ment prac­ti­tion­er for the past sev­en years and watched a lot of the teams work in the emer­gency the­atres at Queen Eliz­a­beth Hos­pi­tal in Birm­ing­ham. One thing that makes the entire process frus­trat­ing is that you’re always wait­ing for your retrieval team, and they could be com­ing from any­where in the coun­try to get to the hos­pi­tal.

“The teams could be trav­el­ling three to fours on the road, do their oper­a­tion, and then trav­el three to four hours back to their home base. They’re on call 24 hours, and by the time they get back, they’re real­ly tired. Short­ened trav­el time by air should have an impact on the team’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and well-being.”

“I believe by the end of this study, I will be able to prove there is a need for this type of trans­porta­tion in health care sys­tems, not only in the UK but glob­al­ly, and there­fore con­tribute to the social per­cep­tion of eVTOL air­craft and what they are capa­ble of.”

Health­care is cer­tain­ly one sec­tor which can ben­e­fit from eVTOL air­craft. Aeromed­ical char­i­ty Care­Flight and eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er AMSL Aero teamed up to launch a new eVTOL air ambu­lance in Aus­tralia, to tack­le rur­al and region­al health­care inequal­i­ty in the coun­try.

Kit­ty­Hawk and Fal­ck are work­ing togeth­er to explore the idea of using Kit­ty­Hawk’s Heav­i­side eVTOL for emer­gency response mis­sions, while EHang is par­tic­i­pat­ing in sev­er­al Euro­pean Union projects and has been select­ed to join Ambu­lar, the inter­na­tion­al project cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing a fly­ing ambu­lance for med­ical emer­gency mis­sions.

Addi­tion­al­ly, com­pa­nies such as Sky­ports, Wing­copter and Volan­si have all been lead­ing projects which involve trans­port­ing essen­tial med­ical items to remote com­mu­ni­ties via eVTOL drones.

Any­one inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the research, or have any fur­ther ques­tions, can con­tact Mr Hart­ley via email on 20009783@student.uwl.ac.uk