Skyports demonstrates Landmark Medical Drone Delivery Capabilities to Thai Health Ministry

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices suc­cess­ful­ly con­duct­ed a land­mark med­ical drone deliv­ery demon­stra­tion for Thailand’s Min­istry of Pub­lic Health, reports asianaviation.com. The tri­al took place on June 2nd after Sky­ports had suc­cess­ful­ly gained Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) per­mis­sions from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty of Thai­land (CAAT).

This land­mark show­case was con­duct­ed for the country’s Med­ical UAV Com­mit­tee, that is tasked to inves­ti­gate the poten­tial use of drone tech­nol­o­gy in advanc­ing the speed and effi­cien­cy of med­ical ser­vices across Thai­land, par­tic­u­lar­ly for remote and under­served regions.

The Com­mit­tee con­sists of mem­bers from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty of Thai­land (CAAT), the Min­istry of Pub­lic Health and Depart­ment of Med­ical Ser­vices, with sup­port from the Nation­al Broad­cast­ing and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (NBTC), AEROTHAI and Sat­un Province.

Tak­ing off from Ratchak­it Prakan Sta­di­um, adja­cent to Sat­un Hos­pi­tal, a 3kg pay­load con­sist­ing of tetanus vac­cines were flown to a land­ing zone near Puyu Tam­bon Health Cen­tre. The drone then returned with bags of blood. The dis­tance cov­ered was approx­i­mate­ly 12km across the sea. The craft com­plet­ed the mis­sion in under sev­en min­utes. The tra­di­tion­al route, which requires trans­port by car and fer­ry, would typ­i­cal­ly take around 55 min­utes.

(Dr Sophon Mek­thana (Fourth from right))

Dr Sophon Mek­thana, Assis­tant Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Health and Chair­man of the Com­mit­tee, com­ment­ed, “This is the first time in Thai­land that a drone has flown across the sea to deliv­er med­i­cine. After the con­clu­sion of this demon­stra­tion, we see the strong poten­tial of drone deliv­ery ser­vices for help­ing peo­ple in need.”

He con­tin­ued, “When sick, even those resid­ing in the most remote com­mu­ni­ties can prompt­ly access med­i­cines and med­ical sup­plies to receive time­ly treat­ment, or if dis­as­ters occur, drones can be used to sup­port med­ical and human­i­tar­i­an mis­sions.”

And added, “We will be able to trans­port med­ical sup­plies, vac­cines and bloods as need­ed, as well as use this demon­stra­tion as a mod­el for future mis­sions in oth­er areas of the coun­try.”

San­jay Suresh, APAC Gen­er­al Man­ag­er for Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, said, “The demon­stra­tion today is the first impor­tant step in show­cas­ing the tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits of med­ical drone deliv­ery ser­vices to the local author­i­ties and health­care organ­i­sa­tions. Draw­ing from the expe­ri­ence and exper­tise of our glob­al oper­a­tions, we are able to bring our rig­or­ous­ly test­ed prac­tices and proven oper­a­tions to Thailand’s unique land­scape and demon­strate the effec­tive­ness of our work.”

He con­tin­ued, “When safe­ly deployed at scale, med­ical drone deliv­ery net­works will sup­port the efforts of Thailand’s health­care sec­tor in bet­ter serv­ing patients through enhanced acces­si­bil­i­ty and time­li­ness.”

The tri­al serves as a major first step to illus­trate the poten­tial impact of BVLOS med­ical drone deliv­er­ies for enhanc­ing speed, con­nec­tiv­i­ty and safe­ty in the deliv­ery of sup­plies to remote and hard-to-reach areas in the coun­try. Thai­land also marks the expan­sion of Sky­ports work, fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful year of expand­ing its range of ser­vices across exist­ing and new mar­kets.

In March, the com­pa­ny com­plet­ed a Proof of Con­cept for med­ical drone deliv­er­ies in Kaga City, Japan. This was fol­lowed by the intro­duc­tion of the company’s Cash-to-Mas­ter ser­vice for ship-to-shore deliv­er­ies in Sin­ga­pore and Korea. Ear­li­er in the year, the company’s Kore­an branch office, Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices Korea, was estab­lished via a Joint Ven­ture agree­ment with local drone tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, Marine Drone Tech.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://skyportsdroneservices.com

(News Source: https://asianaviation.com/)

(Images: Sky­ports)