Skyports to work with Vodafone and Deloitte on space-enabled drone deliveries for NHS in Scotland

Sky­ports has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Voda­fone and Deloitte to trans­port med­ical sup­plies and sam­ples for the NHS in Scot­land using drones.

The live flights, which will take place lat­er this year, will use mobile con­nec­tiv­i­ty and space-based tech­nol­o­gy and is part of a project being led by the drone deliv­ery provider. It was select­ed fol­low­ing a dri­ve to find space-enabled tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vices that can sup­port the NHS’s response to Covid-19, and stop the spread of the dis­ease in a joint fund­ing ini­tia­tive between the UK Space Agency (UKSA) and the Euro­pean Space Agency (ESA).

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

“We want more health­care facil­i­ties to ben­e­fit from our ser­vice over the long-term and the expe­ri­ence of this impor­tant ini­tia­tive will put us anoth­er step clos­er to per­ma­nent oper­a­tions that the whole of the NHS could soon ben­e­fit from.”

NHS staff will be able to make on-demand and sched­uled requests to use Sky­ports drones, via a web cus­tomer inter­face devel­oped by Deloitte.

The drones will be remote­ly pilot­ed from the Sky­ports Oper­a­tions Cen­tre in Argyll and Bute, and will fly auto­mat­i­cal­ly along pre­de­fined routes. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the drone and the ground con­trol sta­tion (GCS) will be pro­vid­ed using Vodafone’s 4G net­work and satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions, as well as Earth obser­va­tion data, to ensure con­nec­tiv­i­ty cov­er­age is pro­vid­ed at all times for safe­ty rea­sons.

By the end of the project, Sky­ports aims to inte­grate its oper­a­tions into the local NHS sup­ply chain, build its route net­work and cre­ate a foun­da­tion drone deliv­ery ser­vice that can be scaled for per­ma­nent oper­a­tions.

Anne Shee­han, Direc­tor, Voda­fone Busi­ness UK, said: “There will be huge ben­e­fits from the use of drones con­nect­ed to the mobile net­work that can be flown safe­ly and secure­ly beyond line of sight. This is a bril­liant exam­ple of how using con­nect­ed drones can rad­i­cal­ly change the way things are done, and real­ly change people’s lives.”

Scott Camp­bell, part­ner and leader in Deloitte Ven­tures, added: “This project is a pow­er­ful exam­ple of the val­ue that drones could bring to com­mu­ni­ties and wider soci­ety in the com­ing years, as busi­ness­es col­lab­o­rate to fur­ther devel­op the tech­nol­o­gy.”

In the com­ing months, Sky­ports will start deliv­er­ing pathol­o­gy sam­ples, med­i­cine, essen­tial per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) and COVID-19 test­ing kits between hos­pi­tals and to and from med­ical prac­tices in Argyll and Bute on the west coast of Scot­land. This is after a suc­cess­ful two-week tri­al which took place in May.

Thanks to the com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­o­gy, pick-ups that cur­rent­ly take up to 48 hours to be trans­port­ed between health­care sites, will take only 30 min­utes and with a much high­er fre­quen­cy.

Sky­ports is also work­ing with the Argyll and Bute HSCP as part of its involve­ment in the CAA Reg­u­la­to­ry Sand­box.