Skyports to support NHS Highlands as it launches UK’s first COVID-19 test delivery service via drone

Argyll and Bute Health and Social Care Part­ner­ship (HSCP) is work­ing with Sky­ports to use drones to trans­port COVID-19 test sam­ples and oth­er med­ical sup­plies between remote loca­tions in the west of Scot­land, as part of a three-month ini­tia­tive to improve COVID-19-relat­ed logis­tics.

The project — which is the first in the UK — has been fund­ed by a joint ini­tia­tive between the UK Space Agency (UKSA) and Euro­pean Space Agency (ESA) to utilise space-enabled tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vices that can sup­port the NHS.

The deliv­ery drones, which will be oper­at­ed by the logis­tics arm of Sky­ports, will car­ry up to 3kg of crit­i­cal med­ical sup­plies up to 40 miles. They will ini­tial­ly oper­ate between Lorn & Islands Hos­pi­tal in Oban, Mid-Argyll Com­mu­ni­ty Hos­pi­tal in Lochgilp­head, Eas­dale Med­ical Prac­tice in Clachan Seil and the Mull & Iona Com­mu­ni­ty Hos­pi­tal in Craignure.

This lat­est project fol­lows a suc­cess­ful proof-of-con­cept, which was con­duct­ed by Argyll & Bute HSCP last year.

Dun­can Walk­er, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Sky­ports, said: “Using drone deliv­er­ies with­in sup­ply chains can cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant time and cost sav­ings.  This ini­tia­tive is a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion from our recent tri­als with the NHS in Scot­land as we scale our oper­a­tions, sup­port­ing a wider net­work of hos­pi­tals and med­ical prac­tices as they con­tin­ue to respond to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“The expe­ri­ence from this impor­tant ini­tia­tive will put us anoth­er step clos­er to per­ma­nent oper­a­tions from which we hope more NHS facil­i­ties could soon ben­e­fit. This project under­scores the via­bil­i­ty of drone tech­nol­o­gy as a prac­ti­cal way to move goods.”

Sky­ports will be using the Swoop Aero’s drone-pow­ered logis­tics plat­form, which will be con­trolled from an oper­a­tions cen­tre in Oban and fly auto­mat­i­cal­ly along pre­de­fined routes. 

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the drone and the ground con­trol sta­tion will be pro­vid­ed by Vodafone’s 4G net­work and satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions, ensur­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty cov­er­age is pro­vid­ed at all times.

Car­go to be car­ried will include COVID-19 and oth­er test sam­ples, med­i­cine, essen­tial per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) and COVID-19 test­ing kits. In a UK first, Sky­ports has also become the first oper­a­tor to receive per­mis­sion by the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) to car­ry diag­nos­tic spec­i­mens by drone.

Using deliv­ery drones, access to hard-to-reach areas can be improved which will sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the speed of trans­port and reduc­ing times in some areas of the Argyll & Bute region from up to 36 hours for a road and fer­ry jour­ney to just 15 min­utes.

Both a sched­uled ser­vice and an on-demand ser­vice will be run, with orders able to be placed by NHS staff through an online sys­tem devel­oped by dig­i­tal con­sul­tants Deloitte.

Stephen Whis­ton, Head of Strate­gic Plan­ning for Argyll and Bute Health and Social Care Part­ner­ship, said: “Argyll and Bute HSCP is delight­ed to once again be at the fore­front of using this inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy to assess how unmanned drones can enhance our logis­tics oper­a­tions and improve ser­vices for patients and clin­i­cians in some of our most remote and island com­mu­ni­ties.

“This three-month project work­ing with Sky­ports will pro­vide crit­i­cal evi­dence on the real ben­e­fits this tech­nol­o­gy can bring to the NHS not only in Argyll and Bute but across Scot­land.”