New Zealand’s First Medical Drone Delivery Trial Hailed A Success, Featuring Real-Time Emergency Situation

Ver­tilink Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Group has helped to suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete New Zealand’s first med­ical drone deliv­ery tri­al, coor­di­nat­ed with a real-time trau­ma-relat­ed emer­gency sim­u­la­tion event on Matakana Island.

Host­ed by Te Kutaroa Marae and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ngāi Te Ran­gi Iwi, Fer­n­tech and PracMed NZ, the tri­al demon­strat­ed how emerg­ing avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies can deliv­er tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits for remote com­mu­ni­ties, from rapid med­ical response to sup­port­ing local economies.

A DJI Fly­Cart 30 air­craft oper­at­ed by Fer­n­tech deliv­ered trau­ma treat­ment equip­ment from Ōmoko­roa to the scene on Matakana Island in less than four min­utes, enabling first respon­ders to sta­bilise the sim­u­lat­ed patient with­in 15 min­utes — a crit­i­cal improve­ment in trau­ma response times for the com­mu­ni­ty, where min­utes can lit­er­al­ly deter­mine the dif­fer­ence between life and death.

Sub­se­quent flights car­ried pre­scrip­tion med­i­cines from Ōmoko­roa Phar­ma­cy for locals on the island and returned with local­ly grown pro­duce back to the main­land, high­light­ing mul­ti­ple prac­ti­cal use cas­es for the island com­mu­ni­ty.

Post­ing the update on LinkedIn, Ver­tilink Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Group said: “This mile­stone is a first step in val­i­dat­ing the research out­comes from our MBIE research project with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land for med­ical and com­mer­cial drone logis­tics. We are excit­ed to con­tin­ue work­ing with com­mu­ni­ties, stake­hold­ers and our part­ner organ­i­sa­tions to explore the full poten­tial of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty across New Zealand.

“Our sin­cere thanks go to Cody Stevens and the team at Fer­n­tech , Simon and Steph at PracMed NZ, Ōmoko­roa Phar­ma­cy, Hato Hone St John , Ngāi Te Ran­gi iwi, and the Matakana Island Com­mu­ni­ty for mak­ing this tri­al a suc­cess!”