North Dakota Drone Delivery: “Medical Supplies Transported 80 Miles in 35 Minutes”

North Dako­ta host­ed a game-chang­ing deliv­ery late last month when a Super­vo­lo drone oper­at­ed by iSight, flew med­ical sup­plies 80 miles from Willis­ton to Wat­ford City in just 35 min­utes, reports a press release. This is half the time of tra­di­tion­al trans­porta­tion.

Part of ‘Project Rur­al Reach’, and with the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Dakota’s Cen­tre for Inno­va­tion and Van­tis lead­ing the tri­al, this BVLOS mis­sion showed that drones can bridge crit­i­cal gaps in remote areas, poten­tial­ly sav­ing lives where every minute counts. The Project is a fed­er­al­ly fund­ed ini­tia­tive led by UND’s Cen­tre for Inno­va­tion.

Jeff Bar­ta, project man­ag­er at UND’s Cen­tre for Inno­va­tion, com­ment­ed, “Instead of a deliv­ery tak­ing 60 to 90 min­utes from start to fin­ish, UAS tech­nol­o­gy can com­plete emer­gency med­ica­tion deliv­er­ies in 35 min­utes. Those saved min­utes could mean the dif­fer­ence between life and death, espe­cial­ly in under­served rur­al areas.”

The flight nav­i­gat­ed a busy uncon­trolled air­space offer­ing a strong test for BVLOS. North Dakota’s Van­tis net­work, the nation’s first statewide UAS sys­tem, was key, pro­vid­ing real-time sur­veil­lance and com­mand-and-con­trol to ensure safe nav­i­ga­tion. The 6 ft long, 10-foot wingspan drone, deliv­ered its pay­load suc­cess­ful­ly, show­cas­ing the poten­tial to rev­o­lu­tionise rur­al health­care logis­tics.

Erin Roesler, Deputy Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the North­ern Plains UAS Test Site (NPUASTS), remarked, “What makes this oper­a­tion so impact­ful is that it proves BVLOS can be done safe­ly, even in com­plex, real-world rur­al envi­ron­ments.” 

Project Rur­al Reach, is fund­ed by the U.S Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Administration’s ARPA pro­gram. It aims to inte­grate drones into rur­al health­care infra­struc­ture.

The con­trol room used for the med­ical flight

iSight Drone Ser­vices received USD50,000 to test long-range deliv­er­ies, with goals to sup­port reli­able access to med­ical sup­plies, sus­tain­able oper­a­tions via renew­able pow­er, and rapid emer­gency response. 

Peter Edis, CEO of McKen­zie Health, said, “The use of drones has the poten­tial to enhance the deliv­ery of health care by rapid­ly trans­port­ing cru­cial lab sam­ples, med­ica­tions, and sup­plies to and from remote clin­ics.”

This tri­al is the first of three planned use cas­es, with future flights set to explore dis­as­ter response and part­ner­ships with emer­gency respon­ders.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://und.edu/innovation/index.html

https://www.vantisuas.com

https://droners.io

(Top image: A Van­tis drone ready for take off)

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