UKRI Future Flight Challenge: “Latest Group of Drone Projects to Receive Funding”

Inno­vate UK, in part­ner­ship with the Depart­ment of Health and Social Care (DHSC), has announced the lat­est group of drone projects to receive fund­ing from the UKRI (UK Research and Inno­va­tion) Future Flight Chal­lenge, reports a press release. 

The pro­gram sup­ports the inno­v­a­tive use of drones to help build robust­ness in UK med­ical sup­ply chains and help con­nect patients with health­care ser­vices more rapid­ly.

Five UK-based projects will share UKP500,000 to cre­ate “a deep­er under­stand­ing of how drones could strength­en and future-proof health­care logis­tics,” explains the release.

The fund­ed projects are:-

: Ver­sa­tile Pack­age Prove­nance Sys­tem (VPS) – A project enabling real-time mon­i­tor­ing of cru­cial health­care pack­ages between NHS Trusts, couri­ers, drones and vans.

: Pio­neer­ing Radio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Drone Deliv­ery – A project help­ing to deliv­er big­ger, crit­i­cal goods pack­ages over longer dis­tances more safe­ly. Deliv­ered in part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tals Coven­try and War­wick­shire NHS Trust and Siemens Health­care.

: Welsh NHS Med­ical Drone Deliv­ery Net­work – A project focused on deliv­er­ing sav­ings using autonomous drones embed­ded into the wider health net­work. The project will be deliv­ered by Snow­do­nia Aero­space, SLiNK-TECH, and the Welsh Health Drone Inno­va­tion Part­ner­ship, led by Welsh Ambu­lance Ser­vices NHS Trust for NHS Wales with the Welsh Blood Ser­vice.

: Dr-UBER: Drone Net­work for Med­ical Emer­gency Deliv­ery in Essex – A project expand­ing the ride-hail­ing con­cept to con­nect med­ical insti­tu­tions such as hos­pi­tals, phar­ma­cies, GPs, and med­ical lab­o­ra­to­ries. This project has been devel­oped by Air­borne Robot­ics in part­ner­ship with Anglia Ruskin Uni­ver­si­ty.

: DROnes in Pathol­o­gy NET­works (DroP­Net) — A project look­ing at how to sim­pli­fy the use of drones to sup­port the move­ment of pathol­o­gy test­ing between NHS facil­i­ties. This project is work­ing along­side the Kent and Med­way Pathol­o­gy Net­work.

In Coop­er­a­tion with Inno­vate UK, the NHS has been using drones to deliv­er chemother­a­py drugs from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight (Cred­it: Apian/PA)

These projects form part of UKRI’s UKP300 mil­lion Future Flight Chal­lenge. “The pro­gram is co-fund­ed by gov­ern­ment and indus­try and is sup­port­ing the cre­ation of the avi­a­tion ecosys­tem need­ed to accel­er­ate the intro­duc­tion of advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM), drones, and elec­tric sub-region­al air­craft in the UK,” says the release. “The chal­lenge is deliv­ered by Inno­vate UK and the Eco­nom­ic and Social Research Coun­cil (ESRC).

Andrew Stephen­son, a UK Health Min­is­ter, com­ment­ed, “Tech­nol­o­gy has huge poten­tial to trans­form the NHS for patients, but it can also help auto­mate process­es behind the scenes too. These projects will help future-proof our med­ical sup­ply chains by using drones to deliv­er med­ical prod­ucts, reduc­ing the chances of sup­ply dis­rup­tion while sav­ing costs, ener­gy and resources.”

He con­tin­ued, “If suc­cess­ful, they could be rolled out across the NHS to boost resilience and help peo­ple live more inde­pen­dent lives, build­ing on the government’s long-term ambi­tions.”

Simon Mas­ters, Future Flight Chal­lenge Deputy Direc­tor, added, “We are com­mit­ted to lead­ing a rev­o­lu­tion in avi­a­tion, deliv­er­ing tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions with eco­nom­ic and soci­etal ben­e­fits. This part­ner­ship between the drone indus­try and the med­ical sec­tor high­lights the val­ue that drones can bring to our front-line pub­lic ser­vices.”

Domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al med­ical goods sup­ply chains are depen­dent on each oth­er, mean­ing the sup­ply of med­ical goods in the UK can be dis­rupt­ed by events around the world. To make domes­tic sup­ply more reli­able, UKRI is pro­mot­ing cross-sec­tor inno­va­tion to strength­en and build long-term resilience.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.ukri.org/

https://www.ukri.org/councils/innovate-uk/

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health-and-social-care

(Top image: UKRI Future Flight Chal­lenge)

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