UK: Skyfarer, Medical Logistics Commence BVLOS Hospital Drone Deliveries

Sky­far­er, a UK aer­i­al co-ordi­na­tor com­pa­ny and Med­ical Logis­tics, a spe­cial­ist health­care couri­er organ­i­sa­tion, have com­menced a Beyond Visu­al Line Of Sight (BVLOS) drone tri­al, deliv­er­ing “vital time-sen­si­tive med­ical sup­plies” to hos­pi­tals via a spe­cial flight cor­ri­dor 20 miles long, reports a press release.

This air­space has been approved by the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) and is called “The Med­ical Logis­tics UK Cor­ri­dor”. It con­nects the Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal Coven­try and War­wick­shire Trust’s hos­pi­tals in Coven­try and Rug­by.

The tri­al will last for three months dur­ing which a record-break­ing num­ber of rou­tine and ad hoc med­ical drone deliv­er­ies will occur.

(Alex Landows­ki, Elliot Parn­ham and Lucy Gilbert of UHCW)

Found­ed in 2017 by Elliot Parn­ham, an Aero­space and Engi­neer­ing grad­u­ate from Coven­try Uni­ver­si­ty, Sky­far­er is a Coven­try based start-up that has set out to use ‘drones for good’ in soci­ety.

Geor­gia Han­ra­han, the com­pa­ny Project Man­ag­er, com­ment­ed, “There are no pot­holes in the sky, nor is there as much con­ges­tion and with­out the need for heavy infra­struc­ture to land, unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles (UAVs) can add to the fleet of logis­ti­cal trans­fers and pro­vide a faster, more sus­tain­ably friend­ly and cheap­er solu­tion.”

This first-of-its-kind tri­al is spon­sored and made pos­si­ble by Lon­don-based Med­ical Logis­tics UK. The com­pa­ny is a lead­ing provider of time-sen­si­tive med­ical deliv­er­ies and per­son­alised on-demand med­ical tests.

Alex Landows­ki, the com­pa­ny MD, said, “I wel­come our new part­ner­ship as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rev­o­lu­tionise the UK med­ical sup­ply chain. We are plan­ning to take med­ical deliv­er­ies to the next lev­el.”

The tri­al is the first of its kind as it is over land, between two NHS Trust hos­pi­tals, in a Hub-Cen­tric Net­work oper­at­ing 24 hours a day, mean­ing that all oper­a­tions are con­trolled from one cen­tral loca­tion and flown BVLOS.

Flights will be con­duct­ed in all weath­er con­di­tions, at vary­ing times of day, so that the Flight Oper­a­tions team can work with the Trust to deter­mine how this tech­nol­o­gy can be per­ma­nent­ly inte­grat­ed. The con­sor­tia want to ensure that it is acces­si­ble to each depart­ment when­ev­er it’s need­ed.

A series of rou­tine and ad-hoc emer­gency flights will also be con­duct­ed to deter­mine the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the Sky­far­er ser­vice and future-proof the NHS inte­gra­tion. The tri­al also kicks off the first leg of the Future Flight Phase 3 project’s cor­ri­dor called “Sky­way”, led by part­ners and UTM indus­try lead­ers Alti­tude Angel.

Sky­way is a drone super­high­way con­nect­ing 165 miles of the UK by the sky, for oper­a­tors like Sky­far­er to fly BVLOS safe­ly and rou­tine­ly. The Med­ical Logis­tics UK cor­ri­dor is the first stage of this drone flight project that will take two years to com­plete.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.skyfarer.co.uk

https://medicallogistics.co.uk

(top pic: Sky­far­er)