UK’s First Medical Drone Delivery Network Begins Next Phase

A con­sor­tium involv­ing Strath­clyde researchers which is deliv­er­ing the UK’s first med­ical dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work by drone has launched its next phase, reports a press release.

Last month, the CAELUS (Care and Equi­ty, Health­care Logis­tics UAS Scot­land) Project secured UKP10.1 mil­lion fund­ing from the Future Flight Chal­lenge at UK Research and Inno­va­tion (UKRI).

To cel­e­brate, con­sor­tium mem­bers, stake­hold­ers and politi­cians gath­ered at Glas­gow Air­port this week for the offi­cial launch. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Pub­lic Health Min­is­ter, Maree Todd, pro­vid­ed the key-note speech. Led by AGS Air­ports, CAELUS brings togeth­er 16 part­ners that also includes, NATS and NHS Scot­land.

Togeth­er they’re work­ing to deliv­er what will be the first nation­al drone net­work that can trans­port essen­tial med­i­cines, bloods and oth­er med­ical sup­plies through­out Scot­land includ­ing to remote com­mu­ni­ties.

Since secur­ing UKP1.5 mil­lion in Jan­u­ary 2020, the con­sor­tium has designed drone land­ing sta­tions for NHS sites across Scot­land and devel­oped a vir­tu­al mod­el (dig­i­tal twin) of the pro­posed deliv­ery net­work that con­nects hos­pi­tals, pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ries, dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tres and GP surg­eries across Scot­land.

This sec­ond phase involves live flight tri­als and remov­ing any remain­ing bar­ri­ers to safe­ly using drones at scale with­in Scotland’s air­space.

Fiona Smith along­side Derek Provan, CEO of AGS Air­ports (Image: John Lin­ton)

Fiona Smith, AGS Air­ports Group Head of Aero­drome Strat­e­gy and CAELUS Project Direc­tor, com­ment­ed, “The project is set to rev­o­lu­tionise the way in which health­care ser­vices are deliv­ered in Scot­land.”

She con­tin­ued, “A drone net­work can ensure crit­i­cal med­ical sup­plies can be deliv­ered more effi­cient­ly. It can reduce wait­ing times for test results and, more impor­tant­ly, it can pro­vide equi­ty of care between urban and remote rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.”

Smith added, “As well as being able to under­take live flights we can begin to deploy the phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture need­ed to sup­port the drones across Scot­land. This will involve build­ing pro­to­type land­ing bases as well as dig­i­tal and com­mu­ni­ca­tion infra­struc­ture. We will also work with local com­mu­ni­ties to ensure they under­stand why and how the drones will be used.”

Live flight tri­als will be oper­at­ed by CAELUS con­sor­tium mem­ber Sky­ports.

NHS Grampian’s Pro­gram Lead for Inno­va­tion, Hazel Dempsey, said, “Ulti­mate­ly, we want to explore if drone tech­nol­o­gy can speed up diag­no­sis and treat­ment of med­ical prob­lems. This has the poten­tial to improve ser­vices for those whose care is depen­dent on rail, fer­ry or air­line timeta­bles and help keep peo­ple at home where they can be sup­port­ed by fam­i­lies and loved ones.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.agsairports.co.uk/drones

https://www.nhsinform.scot

(Pics: Caelus/AGS)